Vector Radar Wave Diffraction Tomography Maximum Likelihood Estimation

Abstract

Signal processing algorithms for target detection have been developed for ground penetrating radar within the theory of maximum likelihood estimation (DTMLE). Diffraction tomography is a wave‐based imaging method whereby received signals are backpropagated into the supporting medium to map the spatial variations in the properties of inhomogeneities. When mated with a maximum likelihood estimator, this approach yields an “image” of the spatial variations in the log likelihood function; the likelihood of a specified target occurring at a particular location. This effort is an extension of previous work on scalar wave DTMLE to the case of vector waves. In addition, the analysis is extended into the evanescent spectrum to exploit the greater spatial resolution available at these shorter length scales (higher spatial frequencies).The motivating application for these algorithms is tunnel detection. The use of vector wave‐based algorithms allows the explicit consideration of the three dimensionality of targets, ...