Depolarization Degree to Determine Dihedral Attribute of Radar Target

Abstract

This paper investigates the ability of the depolarization degree, derived from the characteristic polarization states at the resonant frequency set, to identify corner or swept, i.e. dihedral, changes in same-class targets by a metallic wire example. A well-estimated depolarization degree requires a robust extraction of the fundamental target resonance set in two orthogonal sets of fully co-polarized and cross-polarized polarization channels, then finding the null polarization states using the Lagrangian method. Such depolarization degree per resonance mode has the potential to form a robust feature set because it is relatively less sensitive to onset ambiguity, invariant to rotation, and could create a compact, recognizable, and separable distribution in the proposed feature space. The study was limited to two targets with two swept changes of fifteen degrees within normal incidence; under a supervised learning approach, the results showed that the identification rate converging to upper-bound (100%) for a signal-to-noise ratio above 20 dB and lower-bound around (50%) below −10 dB.