Attempts to use synthetic data to augment measured data for improved synthetic aperture radar (SAR) automatic target recognition (ATR) performance have been hampered by domain mismatch between datasets. Past work which leveraged synthetic data in a transfer learning framework has been successful but was primarily focused on transferring generic SAR features. Recently SAMPLE, a paired synthetic and measured dataset was introduced to the SAR community, enabling demonstration of good ATR performance using 100% synthetic data. In this work, we examine how to leverage synthetic data and measured data to boost ATR using transfer learning. The synthetic dataset corresponds to the MSTAR 15o dataset. We demonstrate that high quality synthetic data can enhance ATR performance even when substantial measured data is available, and that synthetic data can reduce measured data requirements by over 50% while maintaining classification accuracy.
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Improving SAR ATR using synthetic data via transfer learning
Semantic Scholar · Engineering · 2023
Abstract
Attempts to use synthetic data to augment measured data for improved synthetic aperture radar (SAR) automatic target recognition (ATR) performance have been hampered by domain mismatch between datasets. Past work which leveraged synthetic data in a transfer learning framework has been successful but was primarily focused on transferring generic SAR features. Recently SAMPLE, a paired synthetic and measured dataset was introduced to the SAR community, enabling demonstration of good ATR performance using 100% synthetic data. In this work, we examine how to leverage synthetic data and measured data to boost ATR using transfer learning. The synthetic dataset corresponds to the MSTAR 15o dataset. We demonstrate that high quality synthetic data can enhance ATR performance even when substantial measured data is available, and that synthetic data can reduce measured data requirements by over 50% while maintaining classification accuracy.