An Analysis on the Reduction of Measurement Time Using Interpolation Algorithm in Near-field RCS Measurements for Aircraft Shape

The importance of stealth technology is increasing in modern warfare, and Radar Cross Section(RCS) is widely used as an indicator of stealth technology. It is useful to measure RCS using an image-based near-field to far-field transformation algorithm in short-range monostatic conditions. However, the near-field measurement system requires a longer measurement time compared to other methods. In this work, it is proposed to reduce the measured data using an interpolation method in azimuth angular domain. The calculated far-field RCS values according to the sampling rate is shown, and the performance of the algorithm applied with interpolation in the angular domain is presented. It is shown that measurement samples can be reduced several times by using the redundancy in the angular domain while producing results similar to the conventional method.