Patent ID: 7289060

Claim:
A radar for classifying an unknown target illuminated with a large bandwidth pulse, said unknown target reflecting said large bandwidth pulse to form a return, said return received by said radar, said radar comprising: an analog to digital converter for converting said return received by said radar from said unknown target into digital samples at range bin intervals; a computer for: extracting a plurality of unknown range and amplitude pairs descriptive of said unknown target from said digital samples, some of said plurality of unknown range and amplitude pairs within one of said range bin intervals; extracting principal scatterers from said unknown range and amplitude pairs; forming an unknown feature vector for said unknown target using unknown range and amplitude pairs associated with said principal scatterers; retrieving a plurality of known feature vectors, said known feature vectors containing known range and amplitude pairs stored in said computer, said known range and amplitude pairs descriptive of known targets, said known range and amplitude pairs grouped in clusters having least dispersion for each of said known targets; associating for said number of principal scatterers said unknown feature vector descriptive of said unknown target with said plurality of known feature vectors; computing a conditional probability density from comparing said known feature vectors with said unknown feature vector; and classifying said unknown target using highest a posteriori conditional probability density obtained from comparing said known feature vectors with said unknown feature vector.