Hybrid micromotion-scattering center model for synthetic aperture radar micromotion target imaging

Micromotion is an important target feature, although the target micromotion has an unfavorable influence on the synthetic aperture radar （SAR） image interpretation due to defocusing. This paper introduces micromotion parameters into the scattering center model to obtain a hybrid micromotion-scattering center model, and then proposes an optimization algorithm based on the maximal likelihood estimation to solve the model for jointly obtaining target motion and scattering parameters. Initial value estimation methods using targets＇ ghost images are then presented to guarantee the global and fast convergence. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm especially in high precision estimation and multiple targets processing.

Time-domain compressive dictionary of attributed scattering center model for sparse representation

Parameter estimation of the attributed scattering center(ASC) model is significant for automatic target recognition(ATR). Sparse representation based parameter estimation methods have developed rapidly. Construction of the separable dictionary is a key issue for sparse representation technology. A compressive time-domain dictionary(TD) for ASC model is presented. Two-dimensional frequency domain responses of the ASC are produced and transformed into the time domain. Then these time domain responses are cutoff and stacked into vectors. These vectored time-domain responses are amalgamated to form the TD. Compared with the traditional frequency-domain dictionary(FD), the TD is a matrix that is quite spare and can markedly reduce the data size of the dictionary. Based on the basic TD construction method, we present four extended TD construction methods, which are available for different applications. In the experiments, the performance of the TD, including the basic model and the extended models, has been firstly analyzed in comparison with the FD. Secondly, an example of parameter estimation from SAR synthetic aperture radar(SAR) measurements of a target collected in an anechoic room is exhibited. Finally, a sparse image reconstruction example is from two apart apertures. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed TD.

Scattering center modeling for low-detectable targets

The scattering centers(SCs)of low-detectable targets(LDTs)have a low scattering intensity.It is difficult to build the SC model of an LDT using the existing methods because these methods mainly concern dominant SCs with strong scattering contributions.This paper presents an SC modeling approach to acquire the weak SCs of LDTs.We employ the induced currents at the LDT to search SCs,and the joint time-frequency transform together with the Hough transform to separate the scattering contributions of different SCs.Particle swarm optimization(PSO)is applied to improve the estimation results of SCs.The accuracy of the SC model built by this approach is verified by a full-wave numerical method.The validation results show that the SC model of the LDT can precisely simulate the signatures of high-resolution images,such as high-resolution range profile and inverse synthetic aperture radar(ISAR)images.

Synthetic aperture radar imaging based on attributed scatter model using sparse recovery techniques

The sparse recovery algorithms formulate synthetic aperture radar （SAR） imaging problem in terms of sparse representation （SR） of a small number of strong scatters＇ positions among a much large number of potential scatters＇ positions, and provide an effective approach to improve the SAR image resolution. Based on the attributed scatter center model, several experiments were performed with different practical considerations to evaluate the performance of five representative SR techniques, namely, sparse Bayesian learning （SBL）, fast Bayesian matching pursuit （FBMP）, smoothed 10 norm method （SL0）, sparse reconstruction by separable approximation （SpaRSA）, fast iterative shrinkage-thresholding algorithm （FISTA）, and the parameter settings in five SR algorithms were discussed. In different situations, the performances of these algorithms were also discussed. Through the comparison of MSE and failure rate in each algorithm simulation, FBMP and SpaRSA are found suitable for dealing with problems in the SAR imaging based on attributed scattering center model. Although the SBL is time-consuming, it always get better performance when related to failure rate and high SNR.

OPTIMIZATION OF WEIGHTED HIGH-RESOLUTION RANGE PROFILE FOR RADAR TARGET RECOGNITION

For the recognition of high-resolution range profile （HRRP） in radar, the weighted HRRP can reduce the instability of range cells caused by the attitude change of targets. A novel approach is proposed to optimize the weighted HRRP. In the approach, the separability of weighted HRRPs in different targets is measured by de- signing an objective function, and the weighted coefficients are computed by using the gradient descent method, thus enhancing the influence of stable range cells. Simulation results based on five aircraft models show that the approach can effectively optimize the weighted HRRP and improve the recognition accuracy.

A new feature extraction method using the amplitude fluctuation property of target HRRP for radar automatic target recognition

Due to the aspect sensitivity of high-resolution range profile(HRRP),traditional radar HRRP target recognition methods usually use average profile within some target-aspect region as the target-aspect template.Actually,the amplitude fluctuation property of target HRRP also represents some feature information of the target.Based on the scattering center model,a new feature extraction method using the amplitude fluctuation property of target HRRP is proposed in this paper.The weighted HRRP feature extracted by the new method can represent the scatterer distribution in every range cell,thereby it can describe the scattering property of the target better.The experimental results based on measured data show that the new feature extraction method can greatly improve recognition performances.