Rapid Micro-Motion Feature Extraction of Multiple Space Targets Based on Improved IRT

Micro-motion feature extraction is of great significance for target recognition. However, traditional methods mostly focus on single target and struggle to correctly separate the severely overlapping micro-motion curves of multiple targets. In this paper, a rapid micro-motion feature extraction algorithm of multiple space targets based on inverse radon transform (IRT) with a modified model is proposed. First, the high-resolution range profile (HRRP) generated from echo is subject to binarization to improve the unstable estimation caused by noise. Then, the micro-motion period in a complicated multi-target scenario is obtained by a period estimation method based on the autocorrelation coefficients of binarized HRRP. To further improve the extraction accuracy, the IRT model of the micro-range curve is modified from the sine function to second-order sine function. By searching for the remaining unknown parameters in the model in conjunction with the period, the precise micro-range curves are quickly separated. Each time the curves of a target are extracted, they are removed, and the next extraction is carried out until all the targets have been searched. Finally, simulation and experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithm can not only correctly separate the micro-motion feature curves of multiple space targets under low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions but also significantly outperforms the original IRT in terms of extraction speed.