Abstract

Recent research treats radar emitter classification (REC) problems as typical closed-set classification problems, i.e., assuming all radar emitters are cooperative and their pulses can be pre-obtained for training the classifiers. However, such overly ideal assumptions have made it difficult to fit real-world REC problems into such restricted models. In this paper, to achieve online REC in a more realistic way, we convert the online REC problem into dynamically performing subspace clustering on pulse streams. Meanwhile, the pulse streams have evolving and imbalanced properties which are mainly caused by the existence of the non-cooperative emitters. Specifically, a novel data stream clustering (DSC) algorithm, called dynamic improved exemplar-based subspace clustering (DI-ESC), is proposed, which consists of two phases, i.e., initialization and online clustering. First, to achieve subspace clustering on subspace-imbalanced data, a static clustering approach called the improved ESC algorithm (I-ESC) is proposed. Second, based on the subspace clustering results obtained, DI-ESC can process the pulse stream in real-time and can further detect the emitter evolution by the proposed evolution detection strategy. The typically dynamic behavior of emitters such as appearing, disappearing and recurring can be detected and adapted by the DI-ESC. Extinct experiments on real-world emitter data show the sensitivity, effectiveness, and superiority of the proposed I-ESC and DI-ESC algorithms.