Extraction of Virtual Scattering Centers of Vehicles by Ray-Tracing Simulations

Radar images of complex targets can be understood as a superposition of the reflected signals from a high number of scattering centers. To model complex targets for radar simulations, the plurality of scattering centers should be reduced to few significant scattering centers in order to minimize computational effort. The scope of this work is to present a technique to generate a significantly simplified RCS model of the vehicle with a limited number of virtual scattering centers, each with its own scattering characteristic, and how to group these scattering centers in a cluster database. The work is based on ray-tracing simulations of complex vehicle models. The ray-tracing simulations have been validated by measurements. The scattering centers may not be physically existing strong scattering centers, but virtual scattering centers representing a certain scattering behavior. In this paper, a technique for extracting such virtual scattering centers from a complex 3D-vehicle-model is presented. It is based on ray-tracing simulations of such models. As an example, the design model of a Ford Focus is used.