Facet Model of Moving Targets for ISAR Imaging and Radar Back-Scattering Simulation

A facet model of targets is proposed to simulate inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) images and radar back-scattering of moving targets with rigid and nonrigid motions. Targets are composed of solid objects which are modeled by triangular facets. It is shown that a facet can be treated as an equivalent point-scatterer whose radar cross section (RCS) and position depend on the shape of the triangle, the frequency, and the angle of incidence. A shadowing algorithm is also developed to detect the facets which actually have influence on the signal received by the radar. Besides, a facet division algorithm is implemented to improve the result of the shadowing algorithm and to have at least one facet per resolution cell. Finally, we apply our simulator to obtain the ISAR images of a ship and a helicopter and to calculate the micro-Doppler signature of a human.