Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Decades of research have been dedicated to overcoming the obstacles inherent in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) automatic target recognition (ATR). The rise of deep learning technologies has brought a wave of new possibilities, demonstrating significant progress in the field. However, challenges like the susceptibility of SAR images to noise, the requirement for large-scale training datasets, and the often protracted duration of model training still persist. METHODS: This paper introduces a novel data augmentation strategy to address these issues. Our method involves the intentional addition and subsequent removal of speckle noise to artificially enlarge the scope of training data through noise perturbation. Furthermore, we propose a modified network architecture named weighted ResNet, which incorporates residual strain controls for enhanced performance. This network is designed to be computationally efficient and to minimize the amount of training data required. RESULTS: Through rigorous experimental analysis, our research confirms that the proposed data augmentation method, when used in conjunction with the weighted ResNet model, significantly reduces the time needed for training. It also improves the SAR ATR capabilities. DISCUSSION: Compared to existing models and methods tested, the combination of our data augmentation scheme and the weighted ResNet framework achieves higher computational efficiency and better recognition accuracy in SAR ATR applications. This suggests that our approach could be a valuable advancement in the field of SAR image analysis.