Electromagnetic modeling of canonical-target forward scattering for radar applications

A general closed-form model for forward scatter radar signal is tested in this work referring to a representative scenario where a rectangular metallic target crosses the baseline illuminated by a spherical wave. The received signal both in near- and far-field conditions has been validated through an ad-hoc numerical implementation on a full-wave simulation tool. The detection performance obtained by using the standard far-field model and the general closed-form model are analyzed in terms of signal-to-noise ratio and relative mismatch loss. The effect of different baseline distances is considered to give physical insight into the forward scattering effect.