Radar signal classification using PCA-based features

Principal component analysis (PCA) has been used in many applications ranging from social science to space science, for the purpose of data compression and feature extraction. Usage of PCA for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image classification, though widely reported by remote-sensing researchers, has not been exploited much by automatic target recognition (ATR) community. In the present paper, PCA has been used in SAR-ATR using the MSTAR data base, and comparison has been made with the conventional conditional Gaussian model based Bayesian classifier [1]. The results have been compared based on percentage of correct classification, receiver operating characteristics (ROC), and performance with limited amount of training data. By all standards of comparison, the PCA based classifier was observed to outperform the conditional Gaussian model based Bayesian classifier (CGBC) or at the worst it performs at par. And given the computational and algorithmic simplicity of PCA based classifier, the new algorithm was concluded to be a highly prospective candidate for real time ATR systems.