The Cylindrical Wave Approach for the Electromagnetic Scattering by Targets behind a Wall

Abstract

An overview of the cylindrical wave approach in the modeling of through-wall radar problems with targets hidden behind a dielectric wall is reported. The cylindrical wave approach is a technique for the solution of the two-dimensional scattering by buried circular cross-section cylinders in a semi-analytical way, through expansion of the scattered fields into cylindrical waves. In a through-wall radar application, the scattering environment is made by a dielectric layer between two semi-infinite half-spaces filled by air. For this layout, two possible implementations of the cylindrical wave approach have been developed in the case of plane-wave excitation. The first was an iterative scheme with multiple-reflection scattered fields, and the second was a fast and non-iterative solution, through suitable basis functions (i.e., reflected and transmitted cylindrical waves). Such waves take into account all the interactions of the source field with the interfaces bounding the dielectric layers and the targets. The non-iterative approach was also extended for excitation from the radiated field by a line source. A final system was derived for the computation of the scattered field by PEC or dielectric targets. Numerical results show the potentialities of the cylindrical wave approach in the modeling of through-wall radar, in particular in the evaluation of the scattered fields by human targets in a building’s interior, modeled with a two-dimensional approach.