Abstract: Radar echo of ballistic midcourse targets containing electromagnetic and motion information provides important evidence for target recognition. The problem of wideband radar echo simulation for micro-motion targets in ballistic midcourse is studied, and an echo simulation method based on the scattering center model is proposed in this paper. First, the position variation of each scattering center of circles of micro-motion targets is analyzed. Further, a method to judge the masking effect of scattering centers is proposed based on the physical optical principle by considering the structure of rotary symmetrical targets, under which the precession of the targets is equivalent to the rotation in a two-dimension plane. Therefore, the invisible problem of scattering centers arising from the variation of target attitude can be solved. Comparison between the numerical simulation and measurements in anechoic chamber indicates that the proposed method can effectively simulate radar echo of micro-motion targets, and provide a technical foundation for the feature extraction and recognition of midcourse targets.

Key words: Ballistic midcourse, Echo simulation, ElectromaGnetic characteristic, Micro-motion