Electronics 13 04251
Electronics 13 04251
Electronics 13 04251
Editorial
Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Based Radar Signal Processing and
Radar Imaging
Weike Feng 1 , Xiaowei Hu 1, * and Xingyu He 2
1 Air and Missile Defense College, Air Force Engineering University, Xi’an 710051, China;
fengweike007@163.com
2 Air Traffic Control and Navigation College, Air Force Engineering University, Xi’an 710051, China;
hxy_19890708@163.com
* Correspondence: xwhu002@163.com
coded-aperture imaging (TCAI) [20], interferometric ISAR imaging [21], and synthetic
aperture radar ground-moving target indication (SAR-GMTI) [22].
frequency stepping between adjacent pulses and uses this information to construct a filter
for the radar echo, achieving jamming suppression. The effectiveness of this method was
verified by simulations.
The sixth contribution of the Special Issue is a paper by Bo Zou et al. that introduces an
airborne radar STAP method based on deep unfolding and convolutional neural networks.
CNN is used to reduce the requirements of SR algorithms for parameter setting and
iterations, increasing their accuracy, and the clutter space–time spectrum obtained by SR
is used to reduce the network scale of CNN. Based on the idea of deep unfolding (DU),
the SR algorithm is unfolded into a deep neural network, whose optimal parameters
are obtained by training to improve its convergence performance. On this basis, the SR
network and CNN are trained end-to-end to estimate the clutter space–time spectrum
efficiently and accurately. The results of the simulations and experiments show that
the proposed method can improve the clutter suppression performance and has a lower
computational complexity.
The seventh contribution to this Special Issue is a research article by Ninghui Li et al. It
introduces a novel wideband DOA estimation approach utilizing a hierarchical prior based
on variational Bayesian inference. To significantly enhance sparsity, the authors propose a
novel hierarchical Bayesian prior framework and deduce a novel iterative approach. It is
discovered that the iterative approach has a lower computational complexity than most
of the existing state-of-the-art algorithms. The proposed approach also achieves a high
angular estimation accuracy and sparsity performance by utilizing the joint sparsity of the
multiple measurement vector (MMV) models and stabilizes the estimated values between
different frequencies or snapshots to obtain a flat spatial spectrum.
The eighth contribution is an article by Huixu Dong et al. that proposes an algorithm
for sorting staggered pulse repetition interval (PRI) signals based on the congruence
transform. The proposed algorithm transforms the arrival time of the pulse to a fixed value,
based on which the staggered PRI signal sorting and the sub-PRI sequence extraction can be
achieved. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively sort the
staggered PRI signals and obtain the sub-PRI sequence directly without sub-PRI ranking,
and compared to some typical algorithms, it is less affected by the interfered pulses and
the pulse loss.
The ninth contribution to this Special Issue is an article by Zhipeng Liao et al. that
introduces an end-to-end robust adaptive beamforming (RBF) approach that utilizes a
two-stage convolutional neural network. The first stage includes convolutional blocks
and residual blocks without downsampling. The blocks assess the covariance matrix with
precision using finite snapshots. The second stage maps the first stage’s output to an
adaptive weight vector employing a similar structure to the first stage. The two stages are
pre-trained with different datasets and fine-tuned as an end-to-end network, simplifying the
network training process. The two-stage structure enables the network to possess practical
physical meaning, allowing for a satisfying performance even with a few snapshots in the
presence of array gain/phase errors.
The tenth contribution to this Special Issue is a paper by Jieyu Huang et al. A joint
power and bandwidth allocation algorithm in a collocated MIMO radar based on the
quality of service (QoS) framework is proposed for the multi-target tracking problem with
different threat levels. Firstly, a posterior Cramer–Rao lower bound (PCRLB) concerning
the power and bandwidth is derived. Next, the optimal objective functions of power and
bandwidth are designed based on the QoS framework, and the problem is solved using
the convex relaxation technique and the cyclical minimization algorithm. The results show
that the proposed algorithm has better tracking accuracy and achieves more reasonable
resource allocation compared to strategies such as average allocation.
The eleventh contribution is an article by Yongzhe Zhu et al. that proposes a method
for suppressing false target jamming with non-uniform stepped-frequency radar. The
authors derive the correlation between the phase difference of adjacent pulses and range
information and the Doppler frequency when the frequency is uniformly stepped, as well
Electronics 2024, 13, 4251 4 of 6
as the error caused by the Doppler frequency in range estimation. Then, a decoupling
method based on waveform design and the corresponding suppression method of range
false target jamming are proposed. The simulation results show that the proposed method
can effectively suppress the jamming of self-defense range false targets.
Finally, the twelfth contribution to the special issue is a paper by Ziyi Li et al. that
uses a cycle-consistency generative adversarial network (CycleGAN) to suppress clutter for
millimetre-wave radar. In an unsupervised learning way, their proposed method converts
the cluttered range-angle image into a clutter-free one. The generator of CycleGAN is
used as the feature extraction network for object detection. The authors use the public
dataset CRUW to evaluate their proposed method and compare it with traditional methods
and existing deep learning methods. The experimental results show that their proposed
method can ensure the integrity and consistency of the target response while effectively
removing clutter.
3. Conclusions
The Guest Editors of this Special Issue believe that AI-based radar signal processing
and radar imaging will remain at the epicenter of scientific interest, and hope that this
collection of articles will be helpful to scientists who focus their research efforts on this
challenging domain.
9. Wang, Q.; Sheng, J.; Tong, C.; Wang, Z.; Song, T.; Wang, M.; Wang, T. A Fast Facet-Based SAR
Imaging Model and Target Detection Based on YOLOv5 with CBAM and Another Detection
Head. Electronics 2023, 12, 4039. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12194039.
10. Peng, P.; Wang, Q.; Feng, W.; Wang, T.; Tong, C. An SAR Imaging and Detection Model of
Multiple Maritime Targets Based on the Electromagnetic Approach and the Modified CBAM-
YOLOv7 Neural Network. Electronics 2023, 12, 4816. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12234
816.
11. Chen, G.; Wang, C.; Gong, J.; Tan, M. A Fast Phase-Only Beamforming Algorithm for FDA-
MIMO Radar via Kronecker Decomposition. Electronics 2024, 13, 337. https://doi.org/10.3390/
electronics13020337.
12. Li, Z.; Li, Y.; Wang, Y.; Zheng, T.; Qu, H. Millimeter-Wave Radar Clutter Suppression Based
on Cycle-Consistency Generative Adversarial Network. Electronics 2024, 13, 4166. https:
//doi.org/10.3390/electronics13214166.
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