Robust method for the matching of attributed scattering centers with application to synthetic aperture radar automatic target recognition

Abstract

This paper proposes a robust method for the matching of attributed scattering centers (ASCs) with application to synthetic aperture radar automatic target recognition (ATR). For the testing image to be classified, ASCs are extracted to match with the ones predicted by templates. First, Hungarian algorithm is employed to match those two ASC sets initially. Then, a precise matching is carried out through a threshold method. Point similarity and structure similarity are calculated, which are fused to evaluate the overall similarity of the two ASC sets based on the Dempster–Shafer theory of evidence. Finally, the target type is determined by such similarities between the testing image and various types of targets. Experiments on the moving and stationary target acquisition and recognition data verify the validity of the proposed method.