Radar target classification and interpretation by means of structural descriptions of backscatter signals

An approach to radar target classification is presented that exploits the relationship between the physical structure of the observed target and the down-range (polarimetric) cross section of the measured backscatter response. The problem of target classification based on down-range cross section, is broken into three parts. First, the radar backscatter signal measurements are represented as a set of down-range scattering centers parameterized by a Prony modeling technique. Next, the relative range, size, and possibly polarimetric shape of the resulting parametric scattering centers are used to form a description of the structure of the target. Finally, these structural descriptions of the measured backscatter signal are used to classify the target