Adaptive Radar Detection of Dim Moving Targets in Presence of Range Migration

This letter addresses adaptive radar detection of dim moving targets. To circumvent range migration, the detection problem is formulated as a multiple hypothesis test and solved applying model order selection rules which allow to estimate the “position” of the target within the CPI and eventually detect it. The performance analysis shows that the newly proposed architectures can provide an accurate estimate of the target position along with improved detection performance with respect to existing competitors

Fourier independent component analysis of radar micro-Doppler features

The capability of discriminating radar targets exhibiting multiple moving parts has become of great interest for both aerospace and ground-based target recognition and analysis. In particular, helicopters and other targets with rotors, as for instance miniature Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, exhibit peculiar characteristics in the radar return that can be used for their recognition. In this paper a novel algorithm to address the problem of micro-Doppler signature unmixing is proposed, exploiting the signal separation capabilities of the Independent Component Analysis (ICA). The core of the algorithm is represented precisely by the use of the ICA procedure, that has been already proved to be a very effective technique for separating hidden information in mixtures of observations. ICA has been successfully employed in several applications such as wireless communications, radar beamforming, trace-gases unmixing and medical imaging processing. The helicopter's rotor blade signature unmixing from a multi-static radar system is considered as case study and results obtained through the application of ICA to simulated multi-component micro-Doppler signatures show the capability of the proposed approach to successfully accomplish the unmixing operation

Novel Parameter Estimation and Radar Detection Approaches for Multiple Point-Like Targets: Designs and Comparisons

In this work, we develop and compare two innovative strategies for parameter estimation and radar detection of multiple point-like targets. The first strategy, which appears here for the first time, jointly exploits the maximum likelihood approach and Bayesian learning to estimate targets' parameters including their positions in terms of range bins. The second strategy relies on the intuition that for high signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio values, the energy of data containing target components projected onto the nominal steering direction should be higher than the energy of data affected by interference only. The adaptivity with respect to the interference covariance matrix is also considered exploiting a training data set collected in the proximity of the window under test. Finally, another important innovation aspect concerns the adaptive estimation of the unknown number of targets by means of the model order selection rules

Measurements of Surface River Doppler Velocities With Along-Track InSAR Using a Single Antenna

Nowadays, a worldwide database containing the historical and reliable data concerning the water surface speed of rivers is not available and would be highly desirable. In order to meet this requirement, the present work is aimed at the design of an estimation procedure for water flow velocity by means of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data. The main technical aspect of the proposed procedure is that an along-track geometry is synthesized using a single antenna and a single image. This is achieved by exploiting a multichromatic analysis in the Doppler domain. The application of this approach allows us to obtain along-track interferometry equivalent virtual baselines much lower than the equivalent baseline corresponding to the decorrelation time of raw data preserving data coherence. The performance analysis, conducted on live airborne full-polarimetric SAR data, highlights the effectiveness of the proposed approach in providing reliable river surface velocity estimates without the need of multiple passes on the observed scene

The impact of European Union austerity policy on women's work in Southern Europe

Contrary to consolidated economic theory principles, in Europe (but also in other world regions), austerity policy has been implemented instead of stimulus measures which have proven to be successful in crisis associated with credit crunch and insufficient demand. These policies cannot be only considered as an "austericide" due to ideological blindness. They also need to be considered as a strategy for imposing an economic and social reform which proved too difficult to be implemented in the years previous to the great recession. The ongoing fiscal contraction policies include the typical adjustment measures which are now driving the European economy towards a new type of insertion within the international economy. And as a consequence, they imply deep changes on the gender division of work deepening gender inequality. This article analyses the different effects of European Union austerity policy on women and men’s participation in the labour markets in two Southern European countries beaten by the Debt crisis: Spain and Italy. During the first part of this economics crisis, unemployment grew higher for men than for women, but in the second phase with the all sectors hit by the recession and the implementation of harsh austerity policies affecting public-sector jobs, women are also losing their jobs at the same rate than men. We have estimated labour supply models for individuals aged 25 to 54 living in couples with or without children by gender by using the EU-SILC 2011 micro data for Spain and Italy. The analysis carried out shows a strong countercyclical added-worker effect for women in response to transitory shocks in partner’s earnings, in contrast with a procyclical discouraged-worker effect for men. However though the added-worker effect prevails for women in Spain, in Italy still the discouraged worker effect dominates. The results show also a positive effect of the provision of childcare services on women’s labour supply. A cut in social and care services due to austerity promotion may turn the tendency to a decline in women’s participation and employment rates in the labour force with the subsequent loss of total well-being, due to gender differences in education performance, and especially of women’s well-being

Dynamic facial expressions of emotions are discriminated at birth

The ability to discriminate between different facial expressions is fundamental since the first stages of postnatal life. The aim of this study is to investigate whether 2-days-old newborns are capable to discriminate facial expressions of emotions as they naturally take place in everyday interactions, that is in motion. When two dynamic displays depicting a happy and a disgusted facial expression were simultaneously presented (i.e., visual preference paradigm), newborns did not manifest any visual preference (Experiment 1). Nonetheless, after being habituated to a happy or disgusted dynamic emotional expression (i.e., habituation paradigm), newborns successfully discriminated between the two (Experiment 2). These results indicate that at birth newborns are sensitive to dynamic faces expressing emotions

Water level measurements using COSMO-SkyMed synthetic aperture radar

In this work, temporal series of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data are used to estimate water elevations. The proposed method is based on a Sub-Pixel Offset Tracking (technique) to retrieve the displacement of the double-bounce scattering effect of man-made structures located in the proximity of the water surface. The experimental setup is focused on the cases of the Mosul dam in Iraq and the Missouri river in Kansas City. The proposed approach is applied to real data from the COSMO-SkyMed program. Results validated with in-situ and satellite radar altimeter measurements prove the effectiveness of the proposed method in measuring the water levels

Monitoring of Critical Infrastructures by Micromotion Estimation: The Mosul Dam Destabilization

In this article, we propose a new procedure to monitor critical infrastructures. The proposed approach is applied to COSMO-SkyMed data, with the aim to monitor the destabilization of the Mosul dam. Such a dam represents the largest hydraulic facility of Iraq and is located on the Tigris river. The destructive potential of the wave that would be generated, in the event of the dam destruction, could have serious consequences. If the concern for human lives comes first, the concern for cultural heritage protection is not negligible, since several archaeological sites are located around the Mosul dam. The proposed procedure is an in-depth modal assessment based on the micromotion estimation, through a Doppler subapertures tracking and a multichromatic analysis. The method is based initially on the persistent scatterers interferometry that is also discussed for completeness and validation. The modal analysis has detected the presence of several areas of resonance that could mean the presence of cracks, and the results have shown that the dam is still in a strong destabilization. Moreover, the dam appears to be divided into two parts: the northern part is accelerating rapidly while the southern part is decelerating and a main crack in this north south junction is found. The estimated velocities through the PS-InSAR technique show a good agreement with the GNSS in situ measurements, resulting in a very high correlation coefficient and showing how the proposed procedure works efficiently

Gender and the Great Recession: Changes in labour supply in Spain

The focus of this paper is on the different effects of the Great Recession on the decision of women and men to participate or not in the labour market. The literature on the effects of economic crises on labour supply by gender is analyzed. In the applied part of the paper we test the two different hypotheses: the added-worker effect (AWE), showing a countercyclical behaviour of labour supply that implies an increase in individual labour supply in response to transitory shocks in his/her partner\u2019s earnings, and the procyclical discouraged-worker effect (DWE). Given the deep effect of the Great Recession on the Spanish labour market, the empirical part of this paper will focus on the analysis of Spanish labour supply by gender. We have estimated labour supply models for individuals aged 25 to 54 living in couples with or without children by gender by using the EU-SILC 2007 and 2011 micro data for Spain. The results of our analysis show evidence of AWE, much more significant for women whose labour supply increases by 21% when their partner is unemployed against a 0.7% increase experienced by men married to unemployed women. A relevant AWE has also been detected for women if the partner works part-time and is therefore more likely to be underemployed. By comparing the labour supply behaviours before and after the crisis we can see that the discouraging effect connected to higher regional unemployment rates lost significance in 2011 leaving the AWE to dominate the labour supply decision during the crisis for couples

Temporal Convolutional Neural Networks for Radar Micro-Doppler Based Gait Recognition

The capability of sensors to identify individuals in a specific scenario is a topic of high relevance for sensitive sectors such as public security. A traditional approach involves cameras; however, camera-based surveillance systems lack discretion and have high computational and storing requirements in order to perform human identification. Moreover, they are strongly influenced by external factors (e.g., light and weather). This paper proposes an approach based on a temporal convolutional deep neural networks classifier applied to radar micro-Doppler signatures in order to identify individuals. Both sensor and processing requirements ensure a low size weight and power profile, enabling large scale deployment of discrete human identification systems. The proposed approach is assessed on real data concerning 106 individuals. The results show good accuracy of the classifier (the best obtained accuracy is 0.89 with an F1-score of 0.885) and improved performance when compared to other standard approaches