Ground penetrating radar (GPR), as a fast, efficient, and non-destructive detection device, holds great potential for the detection of shallow subsurface environments, such as urban road subsurface monitoring. However, the interpretation of GPR echo images often relies on manual recognition by experienced engineers. In order to address the automatic interpretation of cavity targets in GPR echo images, a recognition-algorithm based on Gaussian mixed model-hidden Markov model (GMM-HMM) is proposed, which can recognize three dimensional (3D) underground voids automatically. First, energy detection on the echo images is performed, whereby the data is pre-processed and pre-filtered. Then, edge histogram descriptor (EHD), histogram of oriented gradient (HOG), and Log-Gabor filters are used to extract features from the images. The traditional method can only be applied to 2D images and pre-processing is required for C-scan images. Finally, the aggregated features are fed into the GMM-HMM for classification and compared with two other methods, long short-term memory (LSTM) and gate recurrent unit (GRU). By testing on a simulated dataset, an accuracy rate of 90% is obtained, demonstrating the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed method.
Implementing an efficient real-time prognostics and health management (PHM) framework improves safety and reduces maintenance costs in complex engineering systems. However, research on PHM framework development for radar systems is limited. Furthermore, typical PHM approaches are centralized, do not scale well, and are challenging to implement. This paper proposes an integrated PHM framework for radar systems based on system structural decomposition to enhance reliability and support maintenance actions. The complexity challenge associated with implementing PHM at the system level is addressed by dividing the radar system into subsystems. Subsequently, optimal measurement point selection and sensor placement algorithms are formulated for effective data acquisition. Local modules are developed for each subsystem health assessment, fault diagnosis, and fault prediction without a centralized controller. Maintenance decisions are based on each local module’s fault diagnosis and prediction results. To further improve the effectiveness of the prognostics stage, the feasibility of integrating deep learning (DL) models is also investigated. Several experiments with different degradation patterns are performed to evaluate the effectiveness of the framework’s DL-based prognostics model. The proposed framework facilitates transitioning from traditional reactive maintenance practices to a predictive maintenance approach, thereby reducing downtime and improving the overall availability of radar systems.
This paper considers the problem of sea clutter suppression. We propose the cuttable encoder-decoder-augmentation network (CEDAN) to improve clutter suppression performance by enriching the contrast information between the target and clutter. Specifically, the plug-and-play residual U-block (ResUblock) is proposed to augment the feature representation ability of the clutter suppression model. The CEDAN first extracts and fuses the multi-scale features using the encoder and the decoder composed of the ResUblocks. Then, the fused features are processed by the contrast information augmentation module (CIAM) to enhance the diversity of target and clutter, resulting in encouraging sea clutter suppression results. In addition, we propose the result-consistency loss to further improve the suppression performance. The result-consistency loss enables CEDAN to cut some blocks of decoder and CIAM to reduce the inference time without significantly degrading the suppression performance. Experimental results on measured and simulated data show that the CEDAN outperforms state-of-the-art sea clutter suppression methods in sea clutter suppression performance and computation efficiency.
Separation and recognition of radar signals is the key function of modern radar reconnaissance, which is of great significance for electronic countermeasures and anti-countermeasures. In order to improve the ability of separating mixed signals in complex electromagnetic environment, a blind source separation algorithm based on degree of cyclostationarity (DCS) criterion is constructed in this paper. Firstly, the DCS criterion is constructed by using the cyclic spectrum theory. Then the algorithm flow of blind source separation is designed based on DCS criterion. At the same time, Givens matrix is constructed to make the blind source separation algorithm suitable for multiple signals with different cyclostationary frequencies. The feasibility of this method is further proved. The theoretical and simulation results show that the algorithm can effectively separate and recognize common multi-radar signals.
There is a growing body of research on the swarm unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in recent years, which has the characteristics of small, low speed, and low height as radar target. To confront the swarm UAV, the design of anti-UAV radar system based on multiple input multiple output (MIMO) is put forward, which can elevate the performance of resolution, angle accuracy, high data rate, and tracking flexibility for swarm UAV detection. Target resolution and detection are the core problem in detecting the swarm UAV. The distinct advantage of MIMO system in angular accuracy measurement is demonstrated by comparing MIMO radar with phased array radar. Since MIMO radar has better performance in resolution, swarm UAV detection still has difficulty in target detection. This paper proposes a multi-mode data fusion algorithm based on deep neural networks to improve the detection effect. Subsequently, signal processing and data processing based on the detection fusion algorithm above are designed, forming a high resolution detection loop. Several simulations are designed to illustrate the feasibility of the designed system and the proposed algorithm.
In modern war, radar countermeasure is becoming increasingly fierce, and the enemy jamming time and pattern are changing more randomly. It is challenging for the radar to efficiently identify jamming and obtain precise parameter information, particularly in low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) situations. In this paper, an approach to intelligent recognition and complex jamming parameter estimate based on joint time-frequency distribution features is proposed to address this challenging issue. Firstly, a joint algorithm based on YOLOv5 convolutional neural networks (CNNs) is proposed, which is used to achieve the jamming signal classification and preliminary parameter estimation. Furthermore, an accurate jamming key parameters estimation algorithm is constructed by comprehensively utilizing chi-square statistical test, feature region search, position regression, spectrum interpolation, etc., which realizes the accurate estimation of jamming carrier frequency, relative delay, Doppler frequency shift, and other parameters. Finally, the approach has improved performance for complex jamming recognition and parameter estimation under low SNR, and the recognition rate can reach 98% under ?15 dB SNR, according to simulation and real data verification results.
The application scope of the forward scatter radar (FSR) based on the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) can be expanded by improving the detection capability. Firstly, the forward-scatter signal model when the target crosses the baseline is constructed. Then, the detection method of the forward-scatter signal based on the Rényi entropy of time-frequency distribution is proposed and the detection performance with different time-frequency distributions is compared. Simulation results show that the method based on the smooth pseudo Wigner-Ville distribution (SPWVD) can achieve the best performance. Next, combined with the geometry of FSR, the influence on detection performance of the relative distance between the target and the baseline is analyzed. Finally, the proposed method is validated by the anechoic chamber measurements and the results show that the detection ability has a 10 dB improvement compared with the common constant false alarm rate (CFAR) detection.
The quality of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image degrades in the case of multiple imaging projection planes (IPPs) and multiple overlapping ship targets, and then the performance of target classification and recognition can be influenced. For addressing this issue, a method for extracting ship targets with overlaps via the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm is proposed. First, the scatterers of ship targets are obtained via the target detection technique. Then, the EM algorithm is applied to extract the scatterers of a single ship target with a single IPP. Afterwards, a novel image amplitude estimation approach is proposed, with which the radar image of a single target with a single IPP can be generated. The proposed method can accomplish IPP selection and targets separation in the image domain, which can improve the image quality and reserve the target information most possibly. Results of simulated and real measured data demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
For bistatic multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar, this paper presents a robust and direction finding method in strong impulse noise environment. By means of a new lower order covariance, the method is effective in suppressing impulse noise and achieving superior direction finding performance using the maximum likelihood (ML) estimation method. A quantum equilibrium optimizer algorithm (QEOA) is devised to resolve the corresponding objective function for efficient and accurate direction finding. The results of simulation reveal the capability of the presented method in success rate and root mean square error over existing direction-finding methods in different application situations, e.g., locating coherent signal sources with very few snapshots in strong impulse noise. Other than that, the Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) under impulse noise environment has been drawn to test the capability of the presented method.
Overlooking the issue of false alarm suppression in heterogeneous change detection leads to inferior detection performance. This paper proposes a method to handle false alarms in heterogeneous change detection. A lightweight network of two channels is bulit based on the combination of convolutional neural network (CNN) and graph convolutional network (GCN). CNNs learn feature difference maps of multitemporal images, and attention modules adaptively fuse CNN-based and graph-based features for different scales. GCNs with a new kernel filter adaptively distinguish between nodes with the same and those with different labels, generating change maps. Experimental evaluation on two datasets validates the efficacy of the proposed method in addressing false alarms.
Beamspace super-resolution methods for elevation estimation in multipath environment has attracted significant attention, especially the beamspace maximum likelihood (BML) algorithm. However, the difference beam is rarely used in super-resolution methods, especially in low elevation estimation. The target airspace information in the difference beam is different from the target airspace information in the sum beam. And the use of difference beams does not significantly increase the complexity of the system and algorithms. Thus, this paper applies the difference beam to the beamformer to improve the elevation estimation performance of BML algorithm. And the direction and number of beams can be adjusted according to the actual needs. The theoretical target elevation angle root means square error (RMSE) and the computational complexity of the proposed algorithms are analyzed. Finally, computer simulations and real data processing results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.
In order to extract the richer feature information of ship targets from sea clutter, and address the high dimensional data problem, a method termed as multi-scale fusion kernel sparse preserving projection (MSFKSPP) based on the maximum margin criterion (MMC) is proposed for recognizing the class of ship targets utilizing the high-resolution range profile (HRRP). Multi-scale fusion is introduced to capture the local and detailed information in small-scale features, and the global and contour information in large-scale features, offering help to extract the edge information from sea clutter and further improving the target recognition accuracy. The proposed method can maximally preserve the multi-scale fusion sparse of data and maximize the class separability in the reduced dimensionality by reproducing kernel Hilbert space. Experimental results on the measured radar data show that the proposed method can effectively extract the features of ship target from sea clutter, further reduce the feature dimensionality, and improve target recognition performance.
Three-dimensional (3D) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) extends the conventional 2D images into 3D features by several acquisitions in different aspects. Compared with 3D techniques via multiple observations in elevation, e.g. SAR interferometry (InSAR) and SAR tomography (TomoSAR), holographic SAR can retrieve 3D structure by observations in azimuth. This paper focuses on designing a novel type of orbit to achieve SAR regional all-azimuth observation (AAO) for embedded targets detection and holographic 3D reconstruction. The ground tracks of the AAO orbit separate the earth surface into grids. Target in these grids can be accessed with an azimuth angle span of 360°, which is similar to the flight path of airborne circular SAR (CSAR). Inspired from the successive coverage orbits of optical sensors, several optimizations are made in the proposed method to ensure favorable grazing angles, the performance of 3D reconstruction, and long-term supervision for SAR sensors. Simulation experiments show the regional AAO can be completed within five hours. In addition, a second AAO of the same area can be duplicated in two days. Finally, an airborne SAR data process result is presented to illustrate the significance of AAO in 3D reconstruction.
