Range profile analysis of complex targets based on ray clustering

This work presents a new technique based on ray tracing to extract and analyze scattering centers from complex targets, which is called ray clustering. The input of this method is the target CAD model and the output is the dominant scattering centers. This method can separate the echoes from different components by clustering rays owning the different paths and establish relationship between target components and the scattering source, thus it can provide an effective approach to analyze the target characteristics. After introducing the implementation procedure of the extracting method, we present an example to demonstrate its application in characteristic analysis.