IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

13, 2014

1361

Simulation of Echoes from Ballistic Targets

Wentao Lv, Junfeng Wang, and Wenxian Yu

AbstractThe classification of warheads and decoys is a very important issue in the defense of ballistic missiles. To train and test
the classifier, the echoes from all kinds of warheads and decoys in
all kinds of situations have to be acquired. However, this is difficult to implement by the experiments in fields or even anechoic
chambers. In this letter, a novel method is presented to simulate
the echoes from ballistic targets when the radar transmits chirps or
other waveforms. A tool for electromagnetic calculation, like CST
Microwave Studio, is first used to simulate the frequency response
of the electromagnetic scattering. The echo is then acquired from
the frequency response by further processing. A series of test results shows the effectiveness of this method.
Index TermsBallistic target, chirp, CST Microwave Studio,
echo simulation.

I. INTRODUCTION

ALLISTIC missiles are very threatening weapons in

modern wars. Therefore, more and more attention is
paid to the defense of ballistic missiles. However, a ballistic
missile may release not only warheads but also decoys in its
midcourse, and this makes its defense difficult [1], [2]. Thus,
the classification of warheads and decoys has to be dealt with
in the defense of ballistic missiles.
To train and test the classifier, the echoes from all kinds of
warheads and decoys in all kinds of situations have to be acquired. However, this is difficult to implement by the experiments in fields or even anechoic chambers. Computer simulation therefore becomes an important way to acquire the echoes.
In fact, simulated echoes have been used in the test of many
algorithms [3], [4]. In the simulation, usually, the target is assumed to consist of scatterers, and the scattering coefficient of
each scatterer is assumed or simply calculated. Such echoes
can be used to test the algorithms for inverse synthetic aperture
radar (ISAR) imaging and motion estimation. However, since
the scattering characteristic of the target is not accurately simulated, such echoes are inapplicable when the scattering characteristic of the target is used to judge whether it is a warhead or
a decoy in the defense of ballistic missiles.
A solution to this problem is to simulate the scattering characteristic of the target accurately using a specialized tool for elec-

Manuscript received June 06, 2014; revised July 01, 2014; accepted July 09,
2014. Date of publication July 18, 2014; date of current version July 25, 2014.
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China
under Grant No. 61072150, the National High-Technology Research and Development Program of China under 200812Z108, and the National Basic Research
Program of China under Grant No. 2010CB731904.
The authors are with the Center for Advanced Sensing Technology, Department of Electronic Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai
200240, China (e-mail: alvinlwt@sjtu.edu.cn; junfengwang@sjtu.edu.cn;
wxyu@sjtu.edu.cn)
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2014.2339353

Fig. 1. Geometry of radar and target.

tromagnetic calculation, such as CST Microwave Studio [5],

HFSS [6], XFDTD [7], or FEKO [8]. However, in many cases,
the tools cannot simulate the echoes from ballistic targets directly. One reason is that the waveform transmitted by the radar
is not provided by the tools. Another reason is that some additional factors, like the range of the initial sample, has to be
additionally considered.
We develop a novel method to simulate the echoes from ballistic targets when the radar transmits chirps or other waveforms. First, a tool for electromagnetic calculation, such as CST
Microwave Studio, is used to simulate the frequency response of
the electromagnetic scattering. Then, the echo is acquired from
the frequency response by further processing. The test results of
a warhead and a decoy indicate the effectiveness of this method.
II. METHOD
Fig. 1 shows the geometry of the radar and the target, where a
point on the target is chosen as the origin. Assume that the radar
transmits a chirp [9][11]
(1)
where is time, is the pulse center,
is a rectangular
window with center 0 and width , is the carrier frequency,
and is the chirp rate. The echo from a scatterer is

(2)
is the range of the scatterer to the radar,
where
is the speed of light, and
is the scattering coefficient of the scatterer. Compared to
,
is delayed by

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 13, 2014

and multiplied by
ture demodulation,
becomes

. After the quadra-

(9)
(3)

Substituting (9) into (7), one obtains

is
where constants in magnitude are ignored. Assume that
the range of the initial sample, and is the time delay relative
to the initial sample. Then
(4)
Substituting (4) into (3), one obtains
(10)
If the range of the target to the radar is much larger than the
size of the target,
can be written as
(11)
is the range of the origin to the radar, and
is the projection of the vector directed from the
origin to the scatterer on the vector directed from the radar to
the origin. Substituting (11) into (10), one obtains

where
(5)
Thus, the echo from the entire target is

(12)
where

(13)
(6)
and are usually referred to as fast time and slow time,
respectively.
Consider the simulation of
. Taking the Fourier transform
of (6), one obtains

where
relation

(7)
denotes the Fourier transform. Based on the

is the frequency response of the scattering and can be simulated using a tool for electromagnetic calculation, like CST Microwave Studio.
Based on the above analysis,
can be simulated as
follows.
1) Find
using a tool for electromagnetic calculation,
such as CST Microwave Studio.
2) Find
according to (12).
3) Find
by taking the inverse Fourier transform of
.
Before the inverse Fourier transform,
may be tapered
by a window, such as a Hamming window, to suppress
sidelobes of
and padded with 0 to achieve a finer sampling of
.
If the radar transmits a step chirp, the echo is written as

(14)

(8)
where constants in magnitude and phase are ignored [9][11],
one obtains

where is the frequency of any subpulse, and

width [10]. Substitution of (11) into (14) yields

is the band(15)

LV et al.: SIMULATION OF ECHOES FROM BALLISTIC TARGETS

1363

Fig. 3. Range-resolved signal from warhead for

Fig. 2. Geometry of a warhead.

where

(16)
is the frequency response of the scattering and can be simulated using a tool for electromagnetic calculation, like CST Microwave Studio. Therefore,
can be simulated as follows:
using a tool for electromagnetic calculation, like
1) Find
CST Microwave Studio. 2) Find
according to (15).
Only one echo, the echo at slow time , is simulated in the
aforementioned method. However, multiple echoes, that is, the
echoes at multiple slow times, are required in many applications. Actually, more echoes can be simulated similarly. When
multiple echoes are simulated, the motion of the target should
be considered to determine the position and the orientation of
the target at each slow time.
III. RESULTS
A series of experiments is made to evaluate our method. In
each experiment, CST Microwave Studio is used to simulate the
frequency response of scattering. The frequencies are selected
from 9.5 to 10.5 GHz with a 5-MHz interval, and the VV polarization mode is adopted.
Our method is used to simulate the echoes from a warhead
(Fig. 2.). , the radius of the cone bottom, is 0.25 m. , the height
of the cone, is 1.5 m. , the radius of the sphere, is 0.05 m. The
coordinate system is selected such that the origin is located at
the geometric centroid of the cone, and the -axis is directed
along the symmetric axis of the cone. Thus, , the distance between the -plane and the cone bottom, is 0.375 m.
is the
top of the warhead. and are the intersections between the
bottom circle of the warhead and the plane determined by the
symmetric axis of the warhead and the line of sight (LOS) of
the radar. Assume that the surface of the warhead has perfect
electric conductivity.

Fig. 4. Range-resolved signal from warhead when

varies from 0 to 180 .

Fig. 3 shows the magnitude of the range-resolved

signal [9][11] from the warhead when
, where
is the angle between the wave direction and the symmetric axis
of the warhead (Fig. 2). Theoretically, there exist two strong
scatterers,
and , on the warhead in this situation. Therefore, the magnitude of the range-resolved signal should have
two peaks, and their distance should be close to the projection
of
on the wave direction, i.e., 1.06 m. This is confirmed
by Fig. 3. This figure shows that the magnitude of the range-resolved signal has two peaks, and their distance is 1.055 m. Our
simulation is consistent with the theoretical analysis.
Fig. 4 shows the magnitude of the range-resolved signal when
varies from 0 to 180 . From this figure, we notice that for
a typical range of ( ), the magnitude of the range-resolved signal has two peaks, and their distance is close to the
projection of
on the wave direction. This is helpful for the
design of the warhead detector in the future.
Fig. 5 shows the ISAR image [10], [12][14] of the warhead
when varies from 0 to 8 . Theoretically, there are three strong
scatterers, , , and , on the target in this situation (Fig. 2).
Therefore, there should be three strong scatterers in the image
of the warhead. As shown in Fig. 5, our simulation is consistent
with the theoretical analysis.
Fig. 6 shows the ISAR image of the warhead when varies
from 30 to 35 . Theoretically, there are two strong scatterers,
and , on the target in this situation (Fig. 2). Note that

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 13, 2014

Fig. 8. Range-resolved signal from ball.

Fig. 5. ISAR image of warhead when

varies from 0 to 8 .

of the ball should be close to the radius of the ball, 0.25 m.

Fig. 8 confirms this. It shows that the magnitude of the rangeresolved signal has one peak, and the distance of this peak to the
center of the ball is 0.249 m. It can be seen that our simulation
is consistent with the theoretical analysis.
IV. CONCLUSION
Our technique is effective in simulating the echoes from ballistic targets when the radar transmits chirps or other waveforms. First, a tool for electromagnetic calculation, such as CST
Microwave Studio, is used to simulate the frequency response of
the electromagnetic scattering. Then, the echo is acquired from
the frequency response by further processing. This technique
can be used to build a library of the echoes from ballistic targets, and this library can be used to train and test the classifier
of warheads and decoys.

Fig. 6. ISAR image of warhead when

varies from 30 to 35 .

Fig. 7. Geometry of a ball.

scatterer is not illuminated by the radar because is larger

than half the cone angle of the warhead. Therefore, there should
be two strong scatterers in the image of the warhead. As shown
in Fig. 6, our simulation is consistent with the theoretical
analysis.
Our method is also used to simulate the echo from a ball, a
typical decoy released by a ballistic missile (Fig. 7). The ball has
a radius of 0.25 m. Its surface has perfect electric conductivity.
Fig. 8 shows the magnitude of the range-resolved signal from
the ball. Theoretically, there is one strong scatterer
on the
ball (Fig. 7). Thus, the magnitude of the range-resolved signal
should have one peak, and the distance of this peak to the center

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