Automatic target recognition method based on polsar images with circular polarimetric basis conversion

Satellite-borne or aircraft-borne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technique is useful for high resolution imaging analysis for terrain surface monitoring or surveillance, even in optically harsh environment. For surveillance application, there are various approaches for automatic target recognition (ATR) of SAR images aiming at monitoring unidentified ships or aircrafts. In addition, various types of analyses using full polarimetric data have been developed recently because it can provide significant information to identify structure of targets, such as vegetation, urban, sea surface areas. In this paper, the circular polarization basis conversion is adopted to improve the robustness especially to variation of target rotation angles. The experimental data, assuming the 1/100 scale model of X-band radar, demonstrate that our proposed method significantly improves an accuracy of target area extraction and classification, even in noisy or angular fluctuated situations.