Recognizing target variants and articulations in synthetic aperture radar images

Abstract

The focus of this paper is recognizing articulated vehicles and actual vehicle configuration variants in real synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. Using SAR scattering-center locations and magnitudes as features, the invariance of these features is shown with articulation (e.g., rotation of a tank turret), with configuration variants, and with a small change in depression angle. This scatterer-location and magnitude quasiinvariance is used as a basis for development of a SAR recognition system that successfully identifies real articulated and nonstandard-configuration vehicles based on nonarticulated, standard recognition models. Identification performance results are presented as vote-space scatterplots and receiver operating characteristic curves for configuration variants, for articulated objects, and for a small change in depression angle with the MSTAR public data.