Propagating Plane-Wave Expansions for Microwave Near-Field Imaging and Radar Cross Section Determination

Efficient algorithms for determining the radar cross section of an object under test as well as for computing a radar image from near-field measurements are investigated. The algorithms are based on expanding the scattered electric field into spectra of propagating plane waves. This allows for the integration into hierarchical multi-level fast multipole schemes and consequently enables the processing of large sets of measurement data, required for the characterization of electrically large objects.