A Target Detection Method in Range-Doppler Domain from SAR Echo Data

The direct evidence of Radar Target Recognition is the backscatter energy and its distribution of objects, which is concluded by imaging process of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) in the two-dimension image domain. So the issues about Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) of SAR are often a "post-process" following SAR imaging. A method of target detection in the state of non-imaging based on analyzing the features of all kinds of targets on SAR echo data is presented in this paper, where the targets are detected in Range-Doppler domain (RDD). Based on analysis of target features in RDD, an algorithm of target detection in a RDD image is developed. The experimental results indicate the validity of the algorithm for special kinds of target detection. The algorithm is simple, able to recurrent, easy for real-time processing and hardware implementation. It can also apply to getting target alarm with real-time SAR data for the pre-selected targets and do the imaging process selectively at the same time.