Polarimetric channels exploitation for improved target detection: Preliminary experiments with the PARSAX radar system

An extension of the PARSAX (which has originally been designed as a weather radar) signal processing with polarimetric target detection is described. The PARSAX radar has the unique possibility of simultaneously retrieving the full polarization back-scattering matrix (BSM) of the signal echo. The extension allows the system usage as a moving target indicator (MTI) surveillance and tracking radar. The new functionality realization uses the PARSAX system architecture, which comprises the digital conversion step at the intermediate frequency, and makes the overall processing chain fully reconfigurable in terms of processing algorithms. Furthermore, the polarimetric information, which comes from the simultaneous estimation of the BSM elements, is exploited in order to mitigate the false alarms and to improve the target detection performance. The experimental validation of the proposed processing has been performed by monitoring ground moving targets over the highways close to the EWI building of the Delft University of Technology.