Application of Interferometry in Polarimetric MIMO Radar for Scattering Diagnostic Imaging

An important application of radar imaging is the positioning of the scattering centers to diagnose the intactness of the target. In this paper, interferometry is applied in the processing of polarimetric MIMO radar data to retrieve the height information. The MIMO radar system developed by our team includes two virtual element arrays enabling radar data measurement at different height. The geometry of the measurement scene is built for radar signal modeling. The 2-D radar images with the different height of the imaging plan are generated by means of the back projection (BP) algorithm, where the imaging grid is meshed on the same reference plan to align the grid points for different height images. The interferometric algorithm is implemented in every grid point to solve the corresponding height, whereas only the points with local maximal magnitudes are marked in the 2-D radar images. The results of different polarization data for a metallic ball, a short ellipsoidal cylinder, and three dihedrals are compared to analyze the consistency of interferometry, while the result of a vehicle is presented to demonstrate the applicability of the interferometry in the processing of polarimetric MIMO radar data.