ISAR Imaging and ATR

In phase I, RDRTec studied the feasibility of applying innovative ISAR imaging and associated Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) approaches to provide classification of maritime targets suitable for autonomous verification of a missile’s target during the end stages of the missile’s flight.  This includes techniques that minimize the time required to detect, track, and classify a target of interest within a cluster of potential targets while maintaining the accuracy needed to provide the high level of Probability of Correct Classification (PCC) required for engagement.   The approach leverages RDRTec’s suite of tools, CADD & MCA, which automate the process of exploiting radar data to perform target detection and identification. RDRTec’s Coherent Airborne Detection & Discrimination (CADD) mode is a SAR mode, which in one measurement can image a large scene, detect multiple targets, screen for target types, and re-focus image chips around those detections for further analysis.  This mode will be leveraged along with traditional surveillance modes, high range resolution, short-dwell ISAR, and real-beam ISAR to minimize the required radar resource utilization aspects of the cruise missile end game scenario.  RDRTec’s Maritime Classification Aids (MCA) will be applied to identify which target within the area of interest is the correct target to be engaged.  In order to achieve a high PCC and provide human-understandable explanations, MCA uses an expert system, physics-based feature extraction which identifies characteristics such as ship length, superstructure dimensions, and rotator location & characteristics.  MCA includes a database of ships of the world which is updated monthly and does not require training data. Based on what was learned in Phase I and currently foreseen transition opportunities, Phase II will extend, mature, test and integrate ATR functionality into MCA.