A Method for Shape Retrieval of Flying Objects Using Satellite Communication Signals

The successful commercialization of satellite communication systems using low earth orbit (LEO) satellites has received significant attention. In this paper, we study the ability of shape retrieval for flying objects using LEO satellite signals. We first show that the object shape can be extracted from the received satellite signals via exploiting the diffraction pattern. Then, we derive a discrete system model that relates the shape of the flying object with the received signal at ground stations, where the impact of the satellite elevation angle is considered. We discuss the “coherence time” for the considered shape retrieval problem and further propose a simple shape retrieval scheme using a linear filter to the combined received samples. Our numerical results verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, and demonstrate promising retrieval performance under various conditions.