Frequency-Based Optimal Radar Waveform Design for Classification Performance Maximization Using Multiclass Fisher Analysis

Abstract

In this article, we propose new waveform design procedures and classification schemes to improve target classification performance nonadaptively in radar systems. The new designs and schemes are all inspired by 2-class and multiclass Fisher discriminant analysis. The proposed system does not require as much computational capability as adaptive waveform design systems while also overcoming: 1) angular uncertainty in classifying high fidelity targets and 2) drops in performance experienced by nonadaptive systems when classification is extended to more than two targets. The waveform design procedure is based on an optimization problem to find the waveform that maximizes the objective function inspired by Fisher analysis under constant energy constraint. We also derive two closed-form solutions for the optimization problems under certain conditions for the 2-class and multiclass cases. All the methods are tested using synthetic and real data to show the performance of the proposed methods against the average Mahalanobis distance (AMD) nonadaptive waveform design and classifier.