Bistatic Scattering by Bare and Coated Perfectly Conducting Targets of Simple Shape

Abstract

We study the scattering interaction of electromagnetic waves with a simple target. The target is a perfectly conducting sphere, either bare or coated with a thin dielectric layer. For the layer, two different hypothetical materials are specified: a non-magnetic lossy dielectric and a dielectric that has also magnetic losses. These hypothetical layers are examples of narrow-band and broadband microwave absorbing coatings. For each target, the general, far-field Mie solution for the bistatic scattered field is computed at selected frequencies. In particular, the radar cross-section (RCS) is in each case generated with a direction resolution of one degree in both azimuthal and latitudinal directions. Using a logarithmic scale the magnitude of the RCS is then presented as a three-dimensional surface. The backscattering and forward scattering characteristics can be conveniently studied from the presented results, and the effect of the two different coatings on the bistatic RCS can be best appreciated.