HYCAM: A RCS Measurement and Analysis System for Time-Varying Targets

The measurement of the radar cross section (RCS) of time-varying targets, which variation of reflectivity are caused by geometrical or radioelectrical deformations has to tackle sever constraints. Indeed the measurement time must be short enough so that the phenomenon under study can be considered as stationary. Besides, the frequency bandwidth of the system has to be wide enough for a fine analysis of the phenomenon. Both constraints induce thereby an increasing amount of data to be processed. However recent evolutions of digital high speed technologies enable to overcome these difficulties. An ultra-wideband digital system, named HYCAM, and dedicated to the measurement and the realtime analysis of the RCS of time varying targets, has been designed. The transmitted waveform is an OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) phase coded signal, which minimizes the ratio between the peak power and the mean power. An instantaneous indoor measurement of a time varying target has been carried out by an experimental system