Tait P. Introduction to Radar Target Recognition

The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2009. — 428 p.Radar is becoming a progressively more sophisticated sensor. It is evolving from a system which detects and tracks targets, to one providing imaging and recognition capabilities. At present, the techniques being developed have not been widely disseminated beyond the laboratories of the radar specialists working in their specific fields. This book has been written to provide an introduction to radar target recognition for the non-specialists, who will have future needs to understand the topic in the course of their professional work, and for the general reader, who has an interest in technical topics.
No prior knowledge of radar has been assumed and a tutorial on radar is included. The techniques used for recognising ground, naval, airborne and ballistic missile targets are presented. These include high-resolution range profiling, SAR, ISAR, JEM, helicopter blade flash and HERM. The operational needs for the development of radar target recognition functions for both military and civil systems are discussed. The issues associated with the radar system and component designs needed to support target recognition and the integration of these new functions with conventional radar modes are presented. Radar systems using dish antennas and phased arrays are covered. The techniques used for the assembly of databases of target signature characteristics are discussed. Classification methods used for recognising targets from the measured radar data and from other available information are presented.
The target recognition techniques are derived from first principles and relatively simple explanations are provided, which are aimed to inform the reader of the essence of the techniques, without the need to understand complex mathematics. For those wishing to develop a deeper knowledge of target recognition, references are provided for further reading. Books are available that cover some of the topics in depth, and other topics are accessible in specialist technical papers.Radar principles
High-resolution range profile
High cross-range resolution techniques
Frequency and time domain analysis
Other high-resolution techniques
System issues
Component implications
Antenna design issues
Operational issues
Applications
Target recognition process
Combining radar signature and other data
Summary and conclusions
Appendices
Classical’ stepped frequency technique
Derivation of JEM spectrum
Bayes’ theorem