Radar Clutter Classification Using Expectation-Maximization Method

In this paper, the problem of classifying radar clutter returns into statistically homogeneous subsets is addressed. To this end, latent variables, which represent the classes to which the tested range cells belong, in conjunction with the expectation-maximization method are jointly exploited to devise the classification architecture. Moreover, two different models for the structure of the clutter covariance matrix are considered. At the analysis stage, numerical examples based on simulated data for the classification performance are presented showing the effectiveness of the proposed classification schemes.