Work

Azimuth-Guided Feature Embedding Network With Dual Inference Mechanism for Few-Shot SAR Target Recognition

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: In the field of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) automatic target recognition (ATR), deep learning-driven methods perform well when numerous training samples are available. However, in practical SAR application scenarios, the number of available training samples is often scarce due to the limitation of observation conditions, which leads to major challenges for deep learning-driven methods in real-world deployment. Currently, the problem of ATR with only a few training samples has attracted much attention in the SAR field. In this article, we put forward an ATR method called azimuth-guided feature embedding network with dual inference mechanism (AGFEN-DIM) to achieve fewshot SAR target recognition. To be specific, the feature extraction model, i.e. azimuth-guided feature embedding network (AGFEN) is composed of the azimuth embedding module (AEM) and the dynamic feature embedding module (DFEN). Among them, AEM resorts to a set of azimuth-parameterized convolution kernels, aiming to make full use of information relevant to the current radar imaging environment. The proposed DFEN is capable of dynamically extracting the discriminative features of the target according to the input image under the guidance of azimuth-parameterized convolutional kernels. The dual inference mechanism (DIM) effectively integrates the inference results of improved prototype classification and label propagation strategy to boost the reliability and robustness of the recognition model for few-shot SAR target recognition tasks. Extensive experiments on the moving and stationary target acquisition and recognition (MSTAR) dataset demonstrate that the proposed AGFEN-DIM surpasses many state-of-the-art SAR ATR methods in various application scenarios.

Source: IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing

DOI: 10.1109/jstars.2025.3588240

Authors: Yan Peng, Xuelian Yu, Haohao Ren, Lei Miao, Lin Zou, Yun Zhou

Institution: University of Electronic Science and Technology of China

Language: English

Topic: Advanced SAR Imaging Techniques

Subfield: Aerospace Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $1,800

Funders: National Natural Science Foundation of China, Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities