Effect of signal-to-clutter ratio on template-based ATR

In this work, we evaluate the robustness of template matching schemes for automatic target recognition (ATR) against the effects of clutter layover. The results of our experiments indicate the performance of template matching ATR in various image transform domains against the signal to clutter ratio (SCR). The purpose of these transforms is to enhance the target features in a chip while suppressing features representative of background clutter or simple noise. The ATR experiments were performed for synthetic aperture radar imagery using target chips in the public domain MSTAR database. The transforms include pointwise nonlinearities such as the logarithm and power operations. The templates are generated using the training portion of the MSTAR database at the nominal SCR. Many different ATR parameterizations are considered for each transform domain where templates are built to represent different ranges of aspect angles in uniform angular bins of 5, 10, 15, 30, and 45 degree increments. The different ATRs were evaluated using the testing portion of the database where synthetic clutter was added to lower the SCR.