Motion compensation and target classification based on parametric modeling of the instantaneous frequency of echoes backscattered from rigid bodies

In this paper we propose a method for motion compensation and target classification, where the feature extraction is performed directly on the received signal. The method does not rely upon the formation of a radar image for classification, as opposed to conventional techniques. The proposed procedure assumes that the target is a rigid body and possesses at least four dominant scatterers, whose instantaneous frequencies can be tracked separately. No assumptions are made on the relative radar-target motion which can be absolutely arbitrary. To discriminate echoes superimposed in time and, possibly, in frequency, we map the received signals onto the time-frequency plane and then apply a parametric estimation method. From a set of at least four dominant echoes, we extract a set of features which are independent of target location and aspect angle. Some simulation results are shown to validate the proposed procedure.