Mahesh C. Shastry

Through-the-Wall Detection of Stationary Human Targets Using Doppler Radar

In homeland security and law enforcement situations, it is often required to remotely detect human targets obscured by walls and barriers. In particular, we are speciflcally interested in scenarios that involve a human whose torso is stationary. We propose a technique to detect and characterize activity associated with a stationary human in through-the-wall scenarios using a Doppler radar system. The presence of stationary humans is identifled by detecting Doppler signatures resulting from breathing, and movement of the human arm and wrist. The irregular, transient, non-uniform, and non-stationary nature of human activity presents a number of challenges in extracting and classifying Doppler signatures from the signal. These are addressed using bio-mechanical human arm movement models and the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) algorithm for Doppler feature extraction. Experimental results demonstrate the efiectiveness of our approach to extract Doppler signatures corresponding to human activity through walls using a 750-MHz Doppler radar system.

A Portable Real-Time Digital Noise Radar System for Through-the-Wall Imaging

We present the design and implementation of a portable, digital, real-time random noise radar system operating in the ultrahigh frequency range for through-the-wall detection and imaging. Noise radar technology is combined with modern digital signal processing approaches to architect a system to covertly perform range imaging of obscured stationary and moving targets as well as to detect the presence of humans via micro-Doppler detection combined with empirical mode decomposition. We model the propagation and sampling nonidealities in the system and propose techniques to overcome the effect of these nonidealities. Experimental results demonstrate the systems capability to image target scenes and characterize human activity from different stand-off distances.

Compressive radar imaging using white stochastic waveforms

In this paper, we apply the principles of compressive sampling to ultra-wideband (UWB) stochastic waveform radar. The theory of compressive sampling says that it is possible to recover a signal that is parsimonious when represented in a particular basis, by acquiring few projections on to an appropriate basis set. Drawing on literature in compressive sampling, we develop the theory behind stochastic waveform-based compressive imaging. We show that using stochastic waveforms for radar imaging, it is possible to estimate target parameters and detect targets by sampling at a rate that is considerably slower than the Nyquist rate and recovering using compressive sensing algorithms. Thus, it is theoretically possible to increase the bandwidth (and hence the spatial resolution) of an ultra-wideband radar system using stochastic waveforms, without significant additions to the data acquisition system. Further, there is virtually no degradation in the performance of a UWB stochastic waveform radar system that employs compressive sampling. We present numerical simulations to show that the performance guarantees provided by theoretical results are achieved in realistic scenarios.

Sparsity-based signal processing for noise radar imaging

Noise radar systems transmitting incoherent signal sequences have been proposed as powerful candidates for implementing compressively sampled detection and imaging systems. This paper presents an analysis of compressively sampled noise radar systems by formulating ultrawideband (UWB) compressive noise radar imaging as a problem of inverting ill-posed linear systems with circulant system matrices. The nonlinear nature of compressive signal recovery presents challenges in characterizing the performance of radar imaging systems. The suitability of noise waveforms for compressive radar is demonstrated using phase transition diagrams and transform point spread functions (TPSFs). The numerical simulations are designed to provide a compelling validation of the system. Nonidealities occurring in practical compressive noise radar systems are addressed by studying the properties of the transmit waveform. The results suggest that waveforms and system matrices that arise in practical noise radar systems are suitable for compressive signal recovery. Field imaging experiments on various target scenarios using a UWB millimeter wave noise radar validate our analytical results and the theoretical guarantees of compressive sensing.

Characterizing detection thresholds using extreme value theory in compressive noise radar imaging

An important outcome of radar signal processing is the detection of the presence or absence of target reflections at each pixel location in a radar image. In this paper, we propose a technique based on extreme value theory for characterizing target detection in the context of compressive sensing. In order to accurately characterize target detection in radar systems, we need to relate detection thresholds and probabilities of false alarm. However, when convex optimization algorithms are used for compressive radar imaging, the recovered signal may have unknown and arbitrary probability distributions. In such cases, we resort to Monte Carlo simulations to construct empirical distributions. Computationally, this approach is impractical for computing thresholds for low probabilities of false alarm. We propose to circumvent this problem by using results from extreme-value theory.

Analysis and design of algorithms for compressive sensing based noise radar systems

We study the compressive radar imaging problem from the perspective of statistical estimation. The goal of this paper is to characterize the estimation error. Conventional radar estimation and detection techniques are characterized by concrete performance guarantees which relate directly to practical systems. The state evolution approach applied to compressive sensing is particularly useful for such analysis. We emphasize the importance of the uniform norm of the estimation error for radar imaging. In the second part of the paper, we propose a weighted compressive sampling scheme for noise radar imaging that utilizes prior information about the target scene. The weights are obtained using the mutual information estimation between target echoes and the transmitted signals with an energy constraint.

Waveform design for compressively sampled ultrawideband radar

Abstract. Compressive sensing makes it possible to recover sparse target scenes from under-sampled measurements when uncorrelated random-noise waveforms are used as probing signals. The mathematical theory behind this assertion is based on the fact that Toeplitz and circulant random matrices generated from independent identically distributed (i.i.d) Gaussian random sequences satisfy the restricted isometry property. In real systems, waveforms have smooth, nonideal autocorrelation functions, thereby degrading the performance of compressive sensing algorithms. Compressive sensing requires the system matrix to have particular properties. Incorporating prior information into the target scene either to enhance imaging or to mitigate nonidealities can result in system matrices that are not suitable for compressive sensing. We can overcome this problem by designing appropriate transmit waveforms. We extend the existing theory to incorporate such nonidealities into the analysis of compressive recovery. As an example we consider the problem of tailoring waveforms to image extended targets. Extended targets make the target scene denser, causing random transmit waveforms to be suboptimal for recovery. We propose to incorporate extended targets by considering them to be sparsely representable in redundant dictionaries. We demonstrate that a low complexity algorithm to optimize the transmit waveform leads to improved performance.

Band-limited random waveforms in compressive radar imaging

Compressive sensing makes it possible to recover sparse target scenes from under-sampled measurements when uncorrelated random-noise waveforms are used as probing signals. The mathematical theory behind this assertion is based on the fact that Toeplitz and circulant random matrices generated from independent identically distributed (i.i.d) Gaussian random sequences satisfy the restricted isometry property. In real systems, waveforms have smooth, non-ideal autocorrelation functions, thereby degrading the performance of compressive sensing algorithms. In this paper, we extend the existing theory to incorporate such non-idealities into the analysis of compressive recovery. The presence of extended scatterers also causes distortions due to the correlation between different cells of the target scene. Extended targets make the target scene more dense, causing random transmit waveforms to be sub-optimal for recovery. We propose to incorporate extended targets by considering them to be sparsely representable in redundant dictionaries. We demonstrate that a low complexity algorithm to optimize the transmit waveform leads to improved performance.