RADAR MAPPING OF DISTRIBUTED TARGETS,

Conventional radar theory deals with point targets, and though a distributed target must necessarily be composed of a large number of point scatterers there remain some doubts as to how applicable the existing theory is to continuous target distributions. The study starts with a brief justification of the target model used, and then invokes the sampling theorem to show under what conditions the continuous distribution can be replaced by an equivalent set of point targets, so that conventional theory can be employed to analyze the resolution problem. In this process it becomes apparent that the common definition of resolution, the half-power width of the receiver response, is not satisfactory for high-performance radar. Instead of a single quantity, four indices of resolution are needed for an adequate description of the resolution performance of a radar.