Classification of Aircraft Targets with Surveillance Radars Based on Fuzzy Fractal Features

The fuzzy fractal characteristics of return signals from aircraft targets in conventional radars offer a description of dynamic features which induce the targets' echo structure, therefore they can provide a new way for aircraft target classification and recognition with low-resolution surveillance radars. On basis of introducing fuzzy fractal theory, the paper analyzes the fuzzy fractal characteristics of return signals from aircraft targets in a VHF-band surveillance radar by means of the fuzzy fractal analysis, and puts forward a fuzzy-fractal-feature-based classification method for aircraft targets with a low-resolution radar from the viewpoint of pattern recognition. The analysis shows that the fuzzy fractal characteristic parameters such as the local fuzzy fractal dimension (LFFD) and local degree of fractality (LGF) can be used as effective features for aircraft target classification and recognition. The results of classification experiments validate the proposed method.