Composite Scattering Analysis of the Ship on a Rough Surface Based on the Forward Parametric Scattering Center Modeling Method

A novel forward method to establish the three-dimensional parametric scattering center models is developed to extract scattering centers from the combined target/rough surface models. Both scattering centers from the ship, including single-order and higher order scattering contributions, and from the multiple interactions between the ship and random rough sea surface would be described concisely with physically relevant parameters by this proposed method. Due to the statistical nature of the random rough surface for the Monte Carlo simulation, we acquire a large number of realizations for estimations of the amplitude and position parameters to overcome the problem that single realization cannot extract scattering centers effectively. This method is validated through parametric models of the ship in free space and on the sea surface, and a good agreement has been demonstrated between the constructed and simulated radar characteristics. Furthermore, we analyze the composite target/surface model's physics and feature stability in a visually spatial range and direct connections between scattering centers and scattering sources, which would be valuable to future target recognitions and classifications. Finally, we quantitatively calculate and analyze the coupling scattering centers from interactions between the ship and the ocean-like surface that provide more abundant contour information of the inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) image to facilitate contour detections.