Recognizing MSTAR target variants and articulations

The focus of this paper is recognizing articulated vehicles and actual vehicle configuration Variants in real SAR images from the MSTAR, public data. Using SAR scattering center locations and magnitudes as features, the invariance of these features is shown with articulation (i.e. turret rotation for the T72 tank and ZSU 23/4 gun), with configuration variants and with a small change in depression angle. This scatterer location and magnitude quasi-invariance (e.g. location within one pixel, magnitude within about ten percent in radar cross-section) is used as a basis for development of a SAR recognition engine that successfully identified real articulated and non-standard configuration vehicles based on non-articulated, standard recognition models. Identification performance results are presented as vote space scatter plots and ROC curves for configuration variants, for articulated objects and for a small change in depression angle with the MSTAR data.