AN EXPERIMENTAL-STUDY ON THE USE OF MULTISTATIC IMAGING FOR INVESTIGATING ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVE-OBJECT INTERACTION

Microwave diversity imaging has the potential to become a very useful tool for understanding and analyzing electromagnetic scattering from c omplex objects. In order for this potential to reach fruition, however , a number of aspects must be dealt with thoroughly: e.g., (1) the met hod for retrieving the image from scattering measurements must be appr opriate for the type of object under investigation; (2) the selection of imaging technique must be made, where possible, so as to obtain dir ect relationships between image intensity (or texture) and scattering mechanisms of interest; and (3) the effects of measurement parameters, such as imaging aperture and frequency, and processing effects, such as gating and windowing, must be well understood. This paper addresses (2) experimentally, with a basis in image retrieval under the physica l optics (PO) approximation. It is shown, via images of single cylinde rs and simple arrangements of cylinders, that multistatic imaging can lead to better understanding of electromagnetic wave-object interactio n than is possible using conventional monostatic and bistatic imaging techniques.