Multipath Ghosts in Radar Imaging: Physical Insight and Mitigation Strategies

Most algorithms commonly exploited for radar imaging are based on linear models that describe only direct scattering events from the targets in the investigated scene. This assumption is rarely verified in practical scenarios where the objects to be imaged interact with each other and with surrounding environment producing undesired multipath signals. These signals manifest in radar images as “ghosts" that usually impair the reliable identification of the targets. The recent literature in the field is attempting to provide suitable techniques for multipath suppression from one side and from the other side is focusing on the exploitation of the additional information conveyed by multipath to improve target detection and localization. This work addresses the first problem with a specific focus on multipath ghosts caused by target-to-target interactions. In particular, the study is performed with regard to metallic scatterers by means of the linearized inverse scattering approach based on the physical optics (PO) approximation. A simple model is proposed in the case of point-like targets to gain insight into the ghosts problem so as to devise possible measurement and processing strategies for their mitigation. Finally, the effectiveness of these methods is assessed by reconstruction results obtained from full-wave synthetic data.