Radar target recognition system using 3-D mathematical model

A target recognition system is described using 3-D mathematical models which simulate radar images. The simulated radar images are created from radar cross section (RCS) responses of the 3-D models and compared with measured target radar images. The 3-D models consist of several thousands facets, and one facet size is less than the radar resolution. An RCS response of each facet in the models is calculated by the modified geometrical theory of diffraction (GTD) method using the information of the radar frequency and the target aspect angle. The RCS response of each facet is projected onto the 2-D plane based on target aspect angle to create the final simulation radar images. The system is verified to be able to simulate even a ship radar imagery, in spite of the difficulty in the simulation due to its structural complexity. Evaluations were made for this recognition system by comparing the simulated ship images created from the 3-D models with the real ship images obtained by an airborne MITSUBISHI-SAR which has the capability of obtaining the X-band Im resolution SAR. and ISARimages, and the system has been proved to have the classification accuracy of better than 90%.