Micro-Doppler Based Target Recognition With Radars: A Review

With the deployment of radar in versatile scenarios and a wide variety of potential targets, demand for automatic classification of various targets is increasing. The wide variety of radar signatures from physically smaller targets due to lower velocity / radar cross-section thresholds and the increased deployment of radar-based sensors do crowd the radar screen with misinterpreted targets. Micro-Doppler signatures have been widely employed by researchers for the recognition of those targets that exhibit micro-motions. This review article presents the evolution and recent advances in radar micro-Doppler based signature analysis and feature extraction. A review of the micro-Doppler-based target classification techniques along with their applications in defense and commercial sectors, has also been presented. This article provides the first review paper in the open literature that systematically covers the major steps along with the adopted practices in micro-Doppler based target recognition. Moreover, the limitations and future trends in the field are also discussed.