On foundations of radar polarimetry

TLDR

Polarization aspects of radar target scattering are reexamined. The study formulates the radar polarimetry optimization problem, modifies Kennaugh's method for nonreciprocal and bistatic cases, and motivates a change of polarization basis by comparing experimental data from different antenna sets. The method avoids diagonalizing the target scattering operator, uses unitary matrix algebra to derive transformation formulas for scattering operators and bilinear voltage forms, and eliminates the need for a change‑of‑basis.

Abstract

Polarization aspects of the radar target scattering problem are reexamined. The optimization problem of radar polarimetry is formulated and Kennaugh's method of finding optimal polarizations is modified and extended to nonreciprocal and bistatic cases. Our approach does not necessitate diagonalization of the target scattering operator and therefore, a change-of-basis is not required. The change-of-polarization-basis is motivated by the comparison of experimental data taken with different antenna sets. Unitary matrix algebra is used to derive proper transformation formulas for scattering operators and bilinear voltage forms.