Statistical CLEAN Technique for ISAR Imaging

Abstract

Inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) images are frequently used in target classification and recognition applications. Some classifiers often require features that can be more easily obtained by extracting scattering centers from ISAR data rather than by reconstructing ISAR images. An available method for scattering center extraction, namely, the CLEAN technique, was proposed in a recent paper by Yang <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">et al</i> . In this paper, an improvement of this CLEAN technique is proposed that introduces a new method for detecting scattering centers. The proposed technique is based on a Gaussianity test, and its effectiveness is first theoretically proven and then tested on real data. Moreover, a comparison with the technique proposed by Yang <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">et al</i> . is shown.