Augmented Depolarizing Scatterer Based on Resonant Elements for Polarimetric Radar Calibration

A 3-in-1 depolarizing circular scatterer for the polarimetric radar calibration is proposed in this article. The proposed scatterer is low cost, compact, planar circuit, and well suited for the radar operating in a compact range, for example, chipless RFID technology. By the virtue of its circular shape, the rear side of the proposed scatterer acts as a metallic disk with strong copolarization backscattered signals. The front side is composed of eight resonant dipoles that make it nondepolarizing and depolarizing scatterers at the inclination of 0° and 45°, respectively. The features of proposed circular scatterer are tested as reference calibration objects for single antenna-based polarimetric radar calibration techniques. Two test objects are utilized: a dihedral tilted at 45° and a depolarizing multiresonant planar structure commonly called chipless RFID tag. The performance of proposed circular scatterer is also compared with the standard reference calibration objects: a metallic disk and a dihedral tilted at 22.5°. The performance of proposed circular scatterer is comparable to the standard reference calibration objects for the calibration techniques (namely, Type 1 and Type 2). The proposed scatterer is potentially tolerant of displacement up to 1 cm and misalignment equals 2°.