Bistatic RCS measurements in a compact range

This paper illustrates the feasibility to perform bistatic RCS measurements in a conventional monostatic compact range that has been reconfigured to perform bistatic measurements at relatively large bistatic angles. The bistatic RCS measurements are conducted by illuminating the target with an incident plane wave generated by an offset parabolic reflector. The bistatic scattering of the target is measured with a wideband double-ridged horn receive antenna that is positioned at the side of the chamber at various fixed bistatic angles. In this study bistatic RCS measurements were conducted on canonical structures as well as a realistic complex scale aircraft model. The bistatic RCS measurements are compared to the full-wave multi-level fast multipole method (MLFMM) in FEKO.