Feature enhancement of SAR imagery using Wiener filtering in multi-wavelet domain

Abstract

Recognition of targets in high-resolution synthetic aperture radar(SAR) imagery is a challenging problem in practice. Features of military targets in SAR imagery play important roles in SAR ATR. Robust feature extraction of these targets is difficult due to extended operating conditions such as obscuration, articulation, varied configurations and a host of camouflage. In this paper, a new method based on wiener filtering reconstruction in multi-wavelet domain to enhance target region feature is presented. It uses a wavelet thresholding estimate as a mean to design a wavelet domain Wiener filter employing two different bases of wavelet, one for the thresholding step and another for the filter application. The experimental results demonstrate that the method can improve the target regional feature, can augment statistical separability between targets and clutter, and benefits to speckle suppression using publicly released SAR data from DARPA's MSTAR program.