Space/time/frequency methods in adaptive radar

Radar systems may be processed with various space, time and frequency techniques. Advanced radar systems are required to detect targets in the presence of jamming and clutter. This work studies the application of two types of radar systems. It is well known that targets moving along-track within a Synthetic Aperture Radar field of view are imaged as defocused objects. The SAR stripmap mode is tuned to stationary ground targets and the mismatch between the SAR processing parameters and the target motion parameters causes the energy to spill over to adjacent image pixels, thus hindering target feature extraction and reducing the probability of detection. The problem can be remedied by generating the image using a filter matched to the actual target motion parameters, effectively focusing the SAR image on the target. For a fixed rate of motion the target velocity can be estimated from the slope of the Doppler frequency characteristic. The problem is similar to the classical problem of estimating the instantaneous frequency of a linear FM signal (chirp). The Wigner-Ville distribution, the Gabor expansion, the Short-Time Fourier transform and the Continuous Wavelet Transform are compared with respect to their performance in noisy SAR data to estimate the instantaneous Doppler frequency of range compressed SAR data. It is shown that these methods exhibit sharp signal-to-noise threshold effects. The space-time radar problem is well suited to the application of techniques that take advantage of the low-rank property of the space-time covariance matrix. It is shown that reduced-rank methods outperform full-rank space-time adaptive processing when the space-time covariance matrix is estimated from a dataset with limited support. The utility of reduced-rank methods is demonstrated by theoretical analysis, simulations and analysis of real data. It is shown that reduced-rank processing has two effects on the performance: increased statistical stability which tends to improve performance, and introduction of a bias which lowers the signal-to-noise ratio. A method for evaluating the theoretical conditioned SNR for fixed reduced-rank transforms is also presented

Micro-doppler classification of ballistic threats using krawtchouk moments

The challenge of ballistic missiles classification is getting greater importance in last years. In fact, since the antimissile defence systems have generally a limited number of interceptors, it is important to distinguish between warheads and confusing objects that the missile releases during its flight, in order to maximize the interception success ratio. For this aim, a novel micro-Doppler based classification technique is presented in this paper characterized by the employment of Krawtchouk moments. Since the evaluation of the latter requires a low computational time, the proposed approach is suitable for real time applications. Finally, a comparison with the 2-dimensional Gabor filter based approach is described by testing both the techniques on real radar data

Detection and classification of vibrating objects in SAR images

The vibratory response of buildings and machines contains key information that can be exploited to infer their operating conditions and to diagnose failures. Furthermore, since vibration signatures observed from the exterior surfaces of structures are intrinsically linked to the type of machinery operating inside of them, the ability to monitor vibrations remotely can enable the detection and identification of the machinery. This dissertation focuses on developing novel techniques for the detection and M-ary classification of vibrating objects in SAR images. The work performed in this dissertation is conducted around three central claims. First, the non-linear transformation that the micro-Doppler return of a vibrating object suffers through SAR sensing does not destroy its information. Second, the instantaneous frequency (IF) of the SAR signal has sufficient information to characterize vibrating objects. Third, it is possible to develop a detection model that encompasses multiple scenarios including both mono-component and multi-component vibrating objects immersed in noise and clutter. In order to cement these claims, two different detection and classification methodologies are investigated. The first methodology is data-driven and utilizes features extracted with the help of the discrete fractional Fourier transform (DFRFT) to feed machine-learning algorithms (MLAs). Specifically, the DFRFT is applied to the IF of the slow-time SAR data, which is reconstructed using techniques of time-frequency analysis. The second methodology is model-based and employs a probabilistic model of the SAR slow-time signal, the Karhunen-Loève transform (KLT), and a likelihood-based decision function. The performance of the two proposed methodologies is characterized using simulated data as well as real SAR data. The suitability of SAR for sensing vibrations is demonstrated by showing that the separability of different classes of vibrating objects is preserved even after non-linear SAR processing Finally, the proposed algorithms are studied when the range-compressed phase-history data is contaminated with noise and clutter. The results show that the proposed methodologies yields reliable results for signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) and signal-to-clutter ratios (SCRs) greater than -5 dB. This requirement is relaxed to SNRs and SCRs greater than -10 dB when the range-compressed phase-history data is pre-processed with the Hankel rank reduction (HRR) clutter-suppression technique

Micro-doppler-based in-home aided and unaided walking recognition with multiple radar and sonar systems

Published in IET Radar, Sonar and Navigation. Online first 21/06/2016.The potential for using micro-Doppler signatures as a basis for distinguishing between aided and unaided gaits is considered in this study for the purpose of characterising normal elderly gait and assessment of patient recovery. In particular, five different classes of mobility are considered: normal unaided walking, walking with a limp, walking using a cane or tripod, walking with a walker, and using a wheelchair. This presents a challenging classification problem as the differences in micro-Doppler for these activities can be quite slight. Within this context, the performance of four different radar and sonar systems – a 40 kHz sonar, a 5.8 GHz wireless pulsed Doppler radar mote, a 10 GHz X-band continuous wave (CW) radar, and a 24 GHz CW radar – is evaluated using a broad range of features. Performance improvements using feature selection is addressed as well as the impact on performance of sensor placement and potential occlusion due to household objects. Results show that nearly 80% correct classification can be achieved with 10 s observations from the 24 GHz CW radar, whereas 86% performance can be achieved with 5 s observations of sonar

Radar intra-pulse modulation classification using convolutional neural networks

This dissertation presents a detailed investigation into the classification of radar intra-pulse modulation schemes. Recent years have seen increased waveform diversity in radar systems which, while making many aspects of pulse analysis more challenging, have presented new opportunities and features for the _eld of classification. This dissertation aims to address the increasing difficulty of pulse classification through the use of modern machine learning techniques - more specifically, by utilising convolutional neural networks. A wide range of modulation schemes was considered and simulated with realistic imperfections to create a dataset that was as representative of real-world scenarios as possible. Data representations of varying levels of abstraction were analysed in order to investigate the effects of data formatting on the performance of various classifiers. A classifier which made use of manual feature extraction was evaluated against a series of convolutional neural network classifiers in order to establish whether improvements in classification accuracy and throughput could be realised. This study also presents research into the viability of classifying data that has been degraded by real transmitter and channel effects using classifiers trained entirely on simulated data. The operation of the tested classifiers is analysed, and parallels are drawn between the feature extraction steps in convolutional neural networks and conventional signal features. The primary research questions in this study are whether machine learning approaches are able to improve on non-machine learning based classification techniques, and which data representations are best suited to convolutional neural network based classification. Classifiers were tested across 28 classes of modulation, with signal-to-noise ratios uniformly distributed between -5 dB and 20 dB. It was found that substantial performance and stability improvements could be achieved when convolutional neural networks were used over the tested non-machine learning based classification technique. The most promising classifier made use of time-frequency representations as an input, and was able to achieve a classification accuracy of 98%, while exhibiting extreme robustness against noise and pulse imperfections

Activity recognition with cooperative radar systems at C and K band

Remote health monitoring is a key component in the future of healthcare with predictive and fall risk estimation applications required in great need and with urgency. Radar, through the exploitation of the micro-Doppler effect, is able to generate signatures that can be classified automatically. In this work, features from two different radar systems operating at C band and K band have been used together co-operatively to classify ten indoor human activities with data from 20 subjects with a support vector machine classifier. Feature selection has been applied to remove redundancies and find a set of salient features for the radar systems, individually and in the fused scenario. Using the aforementioned methods, we show improvements in the classification accuracy for the systems from 75 and 70% for the radar systems individually, up to 89% when fused

Time-Frequency Distributions: Approaches for Incomplete Non-Stationary Signals

There are many sources of waveforms or signals existing around us. They can be natural phenomena such as sound, light and invisible like elec- tromagnetic fields, voltage, etc. Getting an insight into these waveforms helps explain the mysteries surrounding our world and the signal spec- tral analysis (i.e. the Fourier transform) is one of the most significant approaches to analyze a signal. Nevertheless, Fourier analysis cannot provide a time-dependent spectrum description for spectrum-varying signals-non-stationary signal. In these cases, time-frequency distribu- tions are employed instead of the traditional Fourier transform. There have been a variety of methods proposed to obtain the time-frequency representations (TFRs) such as the spectrogram or the Wigner-Ville dis- tribution. The time-frequency distributions (TFDs), indeed, offer us a better signal interpretation in a two-dimensional time-frequency plane, which the Fourier transform fails to give. Nevertheless, in the case of incomplete data, the time-frequency displays are obscured by artifacts, and become highly noisy. Therefore, signal time-frequency features are hardly extracted, and cannot be used for further data processing. In this thesis, we propose two methods to deal with compressed observations. The first one applies compressive sensing with a novel chirp dictionary. This method assumes any windowed signal can be approximated by a sum of chirps, and then performs sparse reconstruction from windowed data in the time domain. A few improvements in computational com- plexity are also included. In the second method, fixed kernel as well as adaptive optimal kernels are used. This work is also based on the as- sumption that any windowed signal can be approximately represented by a sum of chirps. Since any chirp ’s auto-terms only occupy a certain area in the ambiguity domain, the kernel can be designed in a way to remove the other regions where auto-terms do not reside. In this manner, not only cross-terms but also missing samples’ artifact are mitigated signifi- cantly. The two proposed approaches bring about a better performance in the time-frequency signature estimations of the signals, which are sim- ulated with both synthetic and real signals. Notice that in this thesis, we only consider the non-stationary signals with frequency changing slowly with time. It is because the signals with rapidly varying frequency are not sparse in time-frequency domain and then the compressive sensing techniques or sparse reconstructions could not be applied. Also, the data with random missing samples are obtained by randomly choosing the samples’ positions and replacing these samples with zeros

Signals on graphs : transforms and tomograms

Development of efficient tools for the representation of large datasets is a precondition for the study of dynamics on networks. Generalizations of the Fourier transform on graphs have been constructed through projections on the eigenvectors of graph matrices. By exploring mappings of the spectrum of these matrices we show how to construct more general transforms, in particular wavelet-like transforms on graphs. For time-series, tomograms, a generalization of the Radon transforms to arbitrary pairs of non-commuting operators, are positive bilinear transforms with a rigorous probabilistic interpretation which provide a full characterization of the signals and are robust in the preseninfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Terahertz Micro-Doppler Radar for Detection and Characterization of Multicopters

abstract: The micromotions (e.g. vibration, rotation, etc.,) of a target induce time-varying frequency modulations on the reflected signal, called the micro-Doppler modulations. Micro-Doppler modulations are target specific and may contain information needed to detect and characterize the target. Thus, unlike conventional Doppler radars, Fourier transform cannot be used for the analysis of these time dependent frequency modulations. While Doppler radars can detect the presence of a target and deduce if it is approaching or receding from the radar location, they cannot identify the target. Meaning, for a Doppler radar, a small commercial aircraft and a fighter plane when gliding at the same velocity exhibit similar radar signature. However, using a micro-Doppler radar, the time dependent frequency variations caused by the vibrational and rotational micromotions of the two aircrafts can be captured and analyzed to discern between them. Similarly, micro-Doppler signature can be used to distinguish a multicopter from a bird, a quadcopter from a hexacopter or a octacopter, a bus from a car or a truck and even one person from another. In all these scenarios, joint time-frequency transforms must be employed for the analysis of micro-Doppler variations, in order to extract the targets’ features. Due to ample bandwidth, THz radiation provides richer radar signals than the microwave systems. Thus, a Terahertz (THz) micro-Doppler radar is developed in this work for the detection and characterization of the micro-Doppler signatures of quadcopters. The radar is implemented as a continuous-wave (CW) radar in monostatic configuration and operates at a low-THz frequency of 270 GHz. A linear time-frequency transform, the short-time Fourier transform (STFT) is used for the analysis the micro-Doppler signature. The designed radar has been built and measurements are carried out using a quadcopter to detect the micro-Doppler modulations caused by the rotation of its propellers. The spectrograms are obtained for a quadcopter hovering in front of the radar and analysis methods are developed for characterizing the frequency variations caused by the rotational and vibrational micromotions of the quadcopter. The proposed method can be effective for distinguishing the quadcopters from other flying targets like birds which lack the rotational micromotions.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Electrical Engineering 201