Reconstruction of cylindrical metal targets using their monostatic RCS

A simple target reconstruction algorithm has been proposed for cylindrical metal scatterers from the angular Radar Cross Section (RCS) variation. This algorithm is based upon the fact that the monostatic RCS return from a plate has its peak value at the specular reflection angle, and the RCS lobe width in the angular variation is related with its plate width. By assuming the target is a polygonal convex cylinder, sizes of their facets are estimated by the local maxima in the angular RCS variation. Then one may be able to reconstruct the target´s shape by connecting all facets in the specular reflection order. Our algorithm for the flat facet case can also extend to handle smooth curved facets. We have applied our reconstruction algorithm for several cylindrical targets from numerically calculated and measured RCS values. Good agreement has been observed to show the validity of our method.