A Kind of Novel Broadband Target Protector of Synthetic Aperture Radar

Abstract:
Becoming fuzzy, invisible, and even phantom at will for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has fascinated humanity for decades and it has attracted a great deal of attention owing to the advent of new man-made material. However, state-of-the-art target protector typically work in a complex active radio frequency system with high power level or in conjunction with outside help of metal covering/chaff cloud to achieve effective cloaking. Here, we propose the concepts of Meta Scatter (that is, changeable complex backscattering coefficient) Cell driven by field programmable gate array and passive Peripheral Scatter Cell, design a broadband SAR target protector, and build a X-band prototype system “Gap Generator” as an example implementation. In the simulation experiment, the results exhibit an adjustable blurry mask, disappearance, and multiple unreal images for important target, without any cooperation of SAR system. Our work brings the available protection strategies for SAR closer to a wide range of real-time, broadband, and controllable applications, for example, shelter buildings and stealth vehicles. The approach opens the way to facilitating other microwave fuzzy cloaks in security and safety sector and, more generally, individual privacy protection.