12.1 Introduction

Within this chapter the various processes which are required to provide a radar target recognition function are brought together and build on the concepts that have been discussed earlier in the book. Key radar measurements issues, which were extensively presented earlier, are reviewed and include a discussion on target signature distortion in Section 12.2.

The general requirements for and the description of target signature databases are presented in Section 12.3 for the various target recognition techniques. The methods used for assembling the target signature databases are discussed in Section 12.4. Techniques used for the modelling of target signatures are presented in Section 12.5. Two distinct classes of recognition algorithm approaches employed are presented in Section 12.6, which are template matching and feature extraction. The sequence of operations required from the signature measurement and the extraction of the target signature data to applying the recognition algorithms and reference templates to estimate the target's identity are presented in Section 12.7.

12.2 Radar measurements