A vehicle target recognition algorithm for wide-angle SAR based on joint feature set matching

Abstract

Target recognition is an important area in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) research. Wide-angle Synthetic Aperture Radar (WSAR) has obvious advantages in target imaging resolution. This paper presents a vehicle target recognition algorithm for wide-angle SAR, which is based on joint feature set matching (JFSM). In this algorithm, firstly, the modulus stretch step is added in the imaging process of wide-angle SAR to obtain the thinned image of vehicle contour. Secondly, the gravitational-based speckle reduction algorithm is used to obtain a clearer contour image. Thirdly, the image is rotated to obtain a standard orientation image. Subsequently, the image and projection feature sets are extracted. Finally, the JFSM algorithm, which combines the image and projection sets, is used to identify the vehicle model. Experiments show that the recognition accuracy of the proposed algorithm is up to 85%. The proposed algorithm is demonstrated on the Gotcha WSAR dataset.