Designing ISAR Lab Experiments for EO-SAR ATR

Abstract

Radar-based automatic target recognition (ATR) experiments rely on accurate and repeatable synthetic aperture radar (SAR) measurements performed in an anechoic chamber. Yet, the chamber poses challenges to joint electro-optic (EO) and SAR experiments. Here, we present an open-room approach that is suitable for simultaneous EO collection. The local measurement technique, data processing, and SAR ATR feature extraction are discussed with emphasis on EO fusion and the various tradeoffs at each stage. Examples of inverse SAR imagery at Ka-band demonstrate the relatively inexpensive, fast, and repeatable measurements. Finally, candidate EO fusion experiments are discussed.

Keywords

• EO/SAR fusion experiments
• automatic target recognition (ATR)
• synthetic aperture radar (SAR)
• vector network analyzer (VNA)
• near-field
• non-anechoic chamber