Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar, Radar Cross Section, and Iterative Smooth Reweighting $\ell_1$-minimization

Abstract

Radar Cross Section measurement data is often analyzed using Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar images. This paper compares backprojection and iterative smooth reweighted $\ell_1$-minimization as methods to analyze radar cross section measurements and extract radar cross section for parts of the measured object. The main conclusion is that using backprojection images to extract RCS is robust and accurate but is more limited by the resolution than iterative smooth reweighted $\ell_1$-minimization. The latter method can be used for closely spaced scatterers but is limited in accuracy.