Enhanced PRIM recognition using PRI sound and deep learning techniques

by Seyed Majid Hasani Azhdari, Azar Mahmoodzadeh, Mohammad Khishe, Hamed Agahi

Pulse repetition interval modulation (PRIM) is integral to radar identification in modern electronic support measure (ESM) and electronic intelligence (ELINT) systems. Various distortions, including missing pulses, spurious pulses, unintended jitters, and noise from radar antenna scans, often hinder the accurate recognition of PRIM. This research introduces a novel three-stage approach for PRIM recognition, emphasizing the innovative use of PRI sound. A transfer learning-aided deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) is initially used for feature extraction. This is followed by an extreme learning machine (ELM) for real-time PRIM classification. Finally, a gray wolf optimizer (GWO) refines the network’s robustness. To evaluate the proposed method, we develop a real experimental dataset consisting of sound of six common PRI patterns. We utilized eight pre-trained DCNN architectures for evaluation, with VGG16 and ResNet50V2 notably achieving recognition accuracies of 97.53% and 96.92%. Integrating ELM and GWO further optimized the accuracy rates to 98.80% and 97.58. This research advances radar identification by offering an enhanced method for PRIM recognition, emphasizing the potential of PRI sound to address real-world distortions in ESM and ELINT systems.