Interesting components detection for space satellites from inverse synthetic aperture radar image via feature probabilistic estimation

Since inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging is a valuable technique in the identification of space satellites, it can potentially detect interesting components of space satellites in ISAR images to further conduct identification. This study proposes a novel method, defined as feature probabilistic estimation (FPE), to detect interesting components of space satellites based on ISAR image registration. In FPE, area feature registration is provoked to establish the relationship between space satellites and off-line templates of interesting components, followed by detection accuracy based on weighted Gaussian probabilistic density function. Electromagnetic simulations with different aspects, interesting components´ structures and scenery noise demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of the proposed FPE, compared with the normalised cross coefficient.