Near-Field 2-D-Lateral Scan System for RCS Measurement of Full-Scale Targets Located on the Ground

In this paper, a near-field (NF) 2-D-lateral scan system is conceptually described. The analysis of the system is formally performed in a general manner from the modelization of the setup to the postprocessing of the measured or simulated data. The final purpose of the system is to measure the radar cross section (RCS) of full-scale targets located on the ground. The process takes the following steps: 1) NF lateral scanning; 2) inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) computation; 3) scattering centers (SCs) extraction; and 4) computation of the RCS. Techniques are proposed for the compensation of the following issues: antenna radiation pattern, hardware-gating time response, and mechanical deviations of the system. Those corrections are embedded in the ISAR computation method. Some results obtained by a real implementation of the system are shown, demonstrating the accuracy and homogeneity of the global spatial response of the approach.