Experimental results of polarimetric passive ISAR exploiting DVB-S2 illumination

This paper shows a first analysis of polarimetric passive ISAR images using digital video broadcasting-satellite (DVB-S(2)) as illuminator of opportunity. A measurement campaign has been conducted exploiting an experimental system developed at Fraunhofer FHR and a ferry as cooperative target. The collected data have been firstly processed by means of backprojection to obtain ISAR images at each polarimetric channel. Then two different representations in the polarimetric domain are considered. The first one is a color coding based on a modified Pauli decomposition. The second one is the evaluation of the determinant of the Sinclair scattering matrix. From both representations we can recognize that different scattering mechanisms within the same target behave differently in the polarimetric domain. The analysis is conducted on two different data sets with distinct bistatic geometries. The retrieved results assess the usefulness of the polarimetric information in passive ISAR images.