Development of a General Radar Cross Section Model for Complex Flying Vehicle In Motion

This paper presents the development of an extensive modeling framework for the radar cross section (RCS) estimation of a targeted aerial vehicle. The RCS computational module is envisioned to interact with the 6-degrees-of-freedom dynamics of the vehicle including both controlled and uncontrolled motions. The modeling framework captures the effects on the RCS of all major components such as the radar emitter and receiver, the aerial target geometry, reflective properties, and motion, environment, and external electromagnetic countermeasures. The proposed framework will be focused on a pulse-doppler radar in the far-field region working in the wide band regime. Preliminary results obtained with simplified vehicle geometry and a surrogate RCS are presented to illustrate how output results will be formed in conjunction with the capabilities of the simulation environment as an effective support tool for system design and analysis.