On the basic principles of radar polarimetry: the target characteristic polarization state theory of Kennaugh, Huynen's polarization fork concept, and its extension to the partially polarized case

Basic principles of radar polarimetry are introduced. The target characteristic polarization state theory is developed first for the coherent case using the three stage, the basis transformation, and the power (Mueller) matrix optimization procedures. Kennaugh's and Huynen's theories of ra...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inProceedings of the IEEE Vol. 79; no. 10; pp. 1538 - 1550
Main Authors Boerner, W.-M., Yan, W.-L., Xi, A.-Q., Yamaguchi, Y.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York, NY IEEE 01.10.1991
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Subjects
Applied sciences
Differential equations
Exact sciences and technology
High-resolution imaging
Microwave integrated circuits
Optimization methods
Polarization
Radar polarimetry
Radar scattering
Radar theory
Radiocommunications
Radiowave propagation
Symmetric matrices
Telecommunications
Telecommunications and information theory
Voltage
Target
Diffusion matrix
Cross polarization
Radar
Theoretical study
Matrix method
Electromagnetic field
Huygens principle
Polarimetry
Electromagnetic wave
Wave polarization
Optimization
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Summary:Basic principles of radar polarimetry are introduced. The target characteristic polarization state theory is developed first for the coherent case using the three stage, the basis transformation, and the power (Mueller) matrix optimization procedures. Kennaugh's and Huynen's theories of radar target polarimetry are verified for the monostatic reciprocal case. It is shown that there exist, in total, five unique pairs of characteristic polarization states for the symmetric scattering matrix of which two pairs, the cross-polarization null and copolarization max pairs, are identical, whereas the cross-pol max and the cross-pol saddlepoint pairs are distinct. The theory is verified by an example for which next to the polarization fork the copolarized and cross-polarized power density plots are also presented. The partially polarized case for completely polarized wave incidence is presented and compared with the results for the coherent and the partially coherent cases, the latter of which is still unresolved.< >
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 23
ISSN:0018-9219
1558-2256
DOI:10.1109/5.104228