One-vs-All Convolutional Neural Networks for Synthetic Aperture Radar Target Recognition

Abstract Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) have been widely utilized for Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images. However, a large number of parameters and a huge training data requirements limit CNN’s use in SAR ATR. While previous works have primarily focused on model compression and structural modification of CNN, this paper employs the One-Vs-All (OVA) technique on CNN to address these issues. OVA-CNN comprises several Binary classifying CNNs (BCNNs) that act as an expert in correctly recognizing a single target. The BCNN that predicts the highest probability for a given target determines the class to which the target belongs. The evaluation of the model using various metrics on the Moving and Stationary Target Acquisition and Recognition (MSTAR) benchmark dataset illustrates that the OVA-CNN has fewer weight parameters and training sample requirements while exhibiting a high recognition rate.