Optimum distortion-invariant filtering algorithm for detecting maritime targets in overlapping and non-overlapping background noise

A filter function designed to maximize the peak-to-output-energy metric statistically for non-overlapping target and overlapping scene noises is extended for use to detect and identify maritime targets within the framework of an automatic target classifier. The filter is designed to be distortion-invariant with respect to different target aspects. Computer simulations show that the filter can successfully detect the distorted true class targets. A set of filters constructed using subsets of the true class input images were implemented to discriminate target aspects and shown to have reliable performance.