Date of Award

2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Engineering (MSE)

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Committee Chair

Laurie L. Joiner

Committee Member

Mark Tillman

Committee Member

W. David Pan

Subject(s)

deciBel Research, Ultra-wideband devices, Radar--Automatic detection, Adaptive signal processing, Radar targets--Computer simulation, Target acquisition--Computer simulation

Abstract

Effective, radar-based, missile defense requires an efficient, accurate determination of whether an object is lethal or non-lethal. An ideal method would accurately classify targets that contain unknown variations with a minimal number of radar pulses. A wideband, single pulse, manifold classifier is evaluated. The algorithm, deciBel Research's Target Attribute Surface Manifold (dBTASM), is tasked with correctly classifying the pieces of a ballistic missile complex. For this experiment, the algorithm has a database of only three objects, each representing a different piece of the complex. Against this database, missile pieces of different sizes and configurations were classified. An effort to improve classification results through the use of different distance metrics was made. These metrics characterize the fit of the return pulse to the database, and thus they affect the robustness of the algorithm to object variations. Results were mixed; no distance metric proved clearly superior. Recommendations for future work are presented.

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