3D inverse synthetic aperture radar image quality improvement using sparse signal representation

Abstract

Generalisation of one‐dimensional dictionary learning (1DDL) algorithms to Multidimensional (MD) mode and its utilisation in MD data applications, increases the speed and reduces the computational complexity. An example of such an application is 3D inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) image reconstruction and noise reduction. In this study, in addition to MD mode generalisation, the formulation structure of the multidimensional dictionary learning (MDDL) problem is discussed followed by two novel algorithms to solve it. The first one is based on the K‐singular value decomposition algorithm for 1DDL, which uses alternating minimisation and singular value decomposition. The second algorithm is the extension of the sequential generalisation of K‐means 1DDL algorithm to the MD mode. Moreover, the MD tensor denoising method based on the MDDL algorithm (MDDL‐ALG) is proposed. As an application, the proposed method is used to denoise the 3D ISAR image. The numerical simulations reveal that the proposed methods, in addition to reducing the memory consumption and the computational complexity, also enjoy higher convergence rate in comparison to 1D algorithms. Specifically, convergence speed of MD algorithms, depending on the training data size, is up to at least 10 times faster than the equivalent 1D counterparts. As revealed through the simulations, the amount of signal to noise ratio recovered by the proposed methods is almost 2 dB higher than the case using a pre‐designed dictionary for denoising. Moreover, it outperforms about 10 dB over the case with the conventional 3D‐IFFT method for image construction.