A dedicated signal and data processing chain is proposed for a fully polarimetric Doppler surveillance S-band radar to extract the polarimetric signatures of moving targets. To extract the target’s polarimetric features, detection, clustering, and tracking steps are realized for a multi-target environment in the range-Doppler domain. A dedicated data fusion method for all four polarimetric radar channel signals is implemented to take full advantage of the additional polarimetric information and improve the detection performance. While tracking each particular target, polarization information is collected and used to describe their polarization scattering characteristics. Using the polarimetric H/A/α decomposition technique, the polarimetric features of moving automotive targets are extracted and investigated. The developed processing chain has been applied to the signals scattered from vehicles moving in a highway. By employing both time averaging and spatial averaging of the statistical coherency matrix, the polarimetric signatures of both moving vehicles and static clutter have been presented in the two-dimensional H/α plane. It has been found that the spatial averaging approach results in polarimetric signatures of moving vehicles that give the opportunity to directly and without consideration of the motion of the targets compare the polarization features of moving targets and static clutter. Therefore, this method can be used to improve the performance of target detection or target classification.@en

Polarimetric radar responses from moving automotive targets are studied aiming at target classification using the polarimetric H/A/α-decomposition technique. A signal- and data processing chain has been proposed for the detection and tracking of targets in a multi-target environment in the range-Doppler domain. Polarimetric information of the vehicles is collected during tracking and is analyzed by the H/A/α-decomposition technique. Employing both time averaging and spatial averaging of the statistical coherency matrix, the polarimetric signatures of both vehicles and static clutter have been presented in the two-dimensional H/α-plane. It has been found that the spatial averaging approach results in a polarimetric signature that can be very helpful to distinguish automotive vehicles from static clutter.@en