Polarimetrically-Persistent-Scatterer-Based Automatic Target Recognition

Reliable automatic target recognition (ATR) systems based on inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) images require a robust feature selection. An ATR system based on polarimetric ISAR images has been recently proposed that extracts bright scatterers and uses their polarimetric signatures to define classification features. Since bright scatterers could be the results of multiple scattering, the concept of polarimetrically persistent scatterers (PPSs) has been introduced in a recent work. PPS is usually associated with single scattering mechanism and, therefore, may prove to be more robust for classification purposes. In this paper, an ATR system is defined that makes use of PPS. Furthermore, a detailed analysis is carried out to emphasize the meaning of PPSs when used for ATR.