Automatic Target Recognition for Passive Radar

Air-traffic controllers cannot identify air vehicles flying with a defective or nonexistent transponder. Primary radar does not help, because it cannot classify air vehicles from echoes. Passive radar offers a potential solution, the main difficulty lying in the analysis of the data. We present a novel, automatic object-target recognition system capable of classifying air vehicles observed with passive radar. We describe the testbed we deployed near Orly Airport, and the data it provided over 10 days. A preliminary experiment involving three broad classes, and using a grid of parallel classifiers, gives a promising correct recognition rate of 71%.