Automated Ship and Small Craft Classification Tools for ISAR Imagery

Developing effective automated ship and small craft detection and classification tools for airborne radar systems is a challenging problem. Track before detect modes have been developed and implemented to mitigate the problem of false targets due to strong sea clutter returns. Recent studies such as the Office of Naval Research’s (ONR’s) Uncluttered Tactical Picture (UTP) have demonstrated that significant small signal detection performance improvements can be achieved by use of innovative clutter thresholding tools/algorithms. These capabilities are directly applicable to radars that perform Automatic Radar Periscope Detection and Discrimination (ARPDD) processing (e.g., USN AN/APS-147 upgrade). The planned transition of the ARPDD capability to the fleet offers an opportunity to exploit this new knowledge. LSI’s approach is to accurately model the AN/APS-147 ARPDD processing to assess the detection processing performance improvement that would be gained by implementing these advanced thresholding algorithms. LSI will leverage our state of the art knowledge and expertise of the two primary aspects of the solution space: (i) sea clutter phenomenology and sea clutter filtering, (ii) utilization of advanced radar detection and tracking techniques to exploit the differences between sea clutter backscatter, periscopes and small craft target signatures.