Wavelet preprocessing for high range resolution radar classification

We develop a wavelet denoising scheme to aid an automatic target recognition (ATR) system in recognizing aircraft from high range resolution radar (HRR) signatures. A template matching classification technique is used with templates formed from synthetically generated signatures. The goal of the classification system is to achieve classification accuracy equivalent to that obtained with measured HRR signatures. Results suggest that a large portion of HRR signature content is nondiscriminatory. The wavelet denoising process removes the nondiscriminatory information, thereby leading to remarkable increases in classification accuracy. Results are shown for HRR signatures from six aircraft.