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D Convolutional Neural Networks Versus Automatic Classifiers for Known LPI

Radar Signals Under White Gaussian Noise

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DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3027472

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Received September 11, 2020, accepted September 24, 2020, date of publication September 28, 2020,
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Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3027472

1D Convolutional Neural Networks Versus

Automatic Classifiers for Known LPI Radar
Signals Under White Gaussian Noise
ALPER YILDIRIM 1 , (Member, IEEE),
AND SERKAN KIRANYAZ 2 , (Senior Member, IEEE)
1 Bilgem İltaren, Tübitak, 06800 Ankara, Turkey
2 Department of Electrical Engineering, Qatar University, Doha 2713, Qatar
Corresponding author: Alper Yildirim (alperyildirim74@yahoo.com)
This work was supported by the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) through the ongoing project under Grant NPRP11S-0108-180228.

ABSTRACT In this study we analyze the signal classification performances of various classifiers for
deterministic signals under the additive White Gaussian Noise (WGN) in a wide range of signal to noise
ratio (SNR) levels (−40dB to +20dB). The traditional electronic support measure (ESM) systems require
high SNR for radar signal classification. LPI (low probability of intercept) radar signals that are received
by ESM systems are usually corrupted by noise. So, we demonstrate through extensive simulations that
it is possible to achieve high classification performance at low SNR levels providing that the underlying
radar signals are known in advance. MF bank classifier, 1D Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and the
minimum distance classifier using spectral-domain features (the skewness, the kurtosis, and the energy of
the dominant frequency) have been derived for the radar signal classification and their performances have
been compared with each other and with the optimal classifier.

INDEX TERMS Classification, convolutional Neural Networks, radar signal processing, low probability of
intercept radar, electronic support measures, matched filter, spectral moments, white Gaussian noise.

I. INTRODUCTION ESM system knows what to receive, it may operate at a very

Receiver sensitivities of the electronic support mea-
sure (ESM) systems are often insufficient to detect and
classify low power signals. Although the channelized receiver
structures ([1]–[5]) increase the signal processing gain, ESM
systems require a clean signal, i.e. a signal with high SNR.
LPI radar signals that are received by ESM systems are
usually corrupted by noise; therefore, detection, feature
extraction, and classification of such signals are not possible
from safe distances [6]. Traditional ESM systems update the
active threat tables by extracting features, i.e. pulse descriptor
words (PDWs), from the radar signal and classify the threats
comparing with the data available in the emitter mission
library ([7] and [8]). If no clear signal is received (i.e. the
SNR required for a fair parameter estimation is more than
18 dB [7]), it is neither possible to extract the PDWs and nor
to classify the threats. The signal types used in radars have a
simpler structure than those used in telecommunications, and
these signals are generally defined in threat databases. If an
The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and
approving it for publication was Chengpeng Hao . classification methods that can be used for detection and
low signal to noise ratio (SNR) levels.
In [9], the problem of extracting one out of a finite number
of possible signals of the known form given observations in an
additive noise model was studied. Two approaches come for-
ward: 1) the signal with the shortest distance to the observed
data, 2) the signal having a maximal correlation with the
observed data. The authors analyzed the detector error prob-
abilities for various signal dimensions, number of signals,
noise distributions, and signal lengths. In [10], telecommu-
nication signals with 9 different (known) modulations are
classified with 6 different classifiers, where the signals are
corrupted by additive White Gaussian Noise (WGN) and the
classifier performances are compared for several SNR levels
in between −20 to 20 dB. This study has revealed the fact
that telecommunication signals corrupted by severe WGN
and thus being on the border of not being distinguishable
can still be classified with reasonable accuracy and therefore,
the classification errors are especially important to know in
this case.
Accordingly in this study, we aim to evaluate various

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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A. Yildirim, S. Kiranyaz: 1D CNNs Versus Automatic Classifiers for Known LPI Radar Signals

classification of known radar-signals corrupted by severe earlier approaches to the signal classification problem in
WGN. The simplest solution to detect a known determin- ESM systems.
istic signal with additive WGN is to use the matched filter
(MF) ([9] and [11]). Therefore, our first approach is to use A. OPTIMAL SIGNAL CLASSIFICATION IN WGN
an MF bank structure for signal classification in the ESM Radars of interest to ESM systems use specific signal forms
receiver. MF’s are tolerant to signal time shifts; however, which can be used to identify not only the presence of radar
MF bank requires high computational power, whose com- but also its type. Let us define a multiple hypothesis testing
plexity is proportional by the increasing number of signals as given in (1), where Hi , i = 0, 1, . . . , M − 1, denotes
that are needed to be classified. However, in recent years, the hypothesis that the signal R[n], n = 1, 2, . . . , L, is a
1D CNNs have achieved the state-of-the-art performance noise-corrupted version of the ith deterministic signal si [n],
levels in many applications such as personalized biomedi- selected from a possible set of M deterministic signals:
cal data classification and early diagnosis [12]–[15], struc-
tural health monitoring [16]–[20], anomaly detection and Hi : R[n] = si [n] + W [n] (1)
identification in power electronics and motor-fault detec-
tion [21]–[26]. Recently conventional, 2D, and deep CNNs where W [n] denotes independent, zero-mean, Gaussian ran-
have been applied to radar signal classification [27]–[32]. dom variables with variance σ 2 .
However, they are very complex and data-hungry models, In this case, each signal, si [n], and the corresponding
which require a certain parallelized computing environment hypothesis Hi , would correspond to the presence of a partic-
and also 1D to 2D transformation of the radar signal. More- ular type of radar. Thus, our task is to decide in favor of one
over, when the data is scarce, in order to prevent over-fitting of the hypotheses, given a set of measurements r[n] of R[n].
and poor generalization deep (2D) CNNs usually require As derived in [37] for minimum error probability, the required
certain techniques such as data augmentation and Dropout, test involves a comparison of the quantities in (2).
which not only increases the computational complexity and L
! !
X E i
training, they may not address these issues completely. There- H ∗ = max r [n] si [n] − + σ 2 lnP (Hi ) ,
fore, in this study, we propose to use compact 1D CNNs that i 2
n=1
can directly be applied to the received data signal without i = 0, 1, . . . ,M − 1 (2)
any pre-processing and they allow real-time implementation
even on low-power devices due to their elegant computa- where Ei denotes the energy of the ith signal and H ∗ is the
tional efficiency [33], [34]. Our third approach is based on hypothesis selected. Since it may not be possible to know the
spectral-domain features of the radar signals received by signal probabilities in advance, assume that the hypotheses
the ESM system. Spectral moments (skewness and kurtosis) are equally likely a priori, so that lnP (Hi ) = 0. Under the
based on Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) spectra have assumption that the signals have equal energies, the above
been used with some success to classify signals in many comparison reduces to deciding in favor of the signal with
applications ([35] and [36]). Overall, this study aims to per- the highest deterministic correlation,
form comparative evaluations of major classifiers for known XL
LPI radar signals in a wide range of SNR levels. More- r[n]si [n]. (3)
n=1
over, this is the first time that the proposed compact and
Note that, in order to use the optimal classifier as in (3), it will
adaptive 1D CNNs are used for LPI Radar Signal classifi-
be necessary to equalize the energies of the signals (si [n]) in
cation and compared against those conventional (automatic)
advance.
classifiers through a detailed set of experiments. Finally,
this is the first study in the literature that evaluates the
B. MF BANK (MFB) CLASSIFIER
classifier performances starting from very low SNR levels,
i.e. −40 dB. A filter whose impulse response h[n] = Cs[n0 − n] is called
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, ‘‘the matched filter’’ to the signal s[n] ([38], [39] and [40]).
the optimal and the MF bank classifier definitions are pre- With h[n] as the impulse response and r[n] as the input,
sented. In Section 3, an overview of the 1-D CNN classifier is the output y[n] will be the convolution sum for a linear time
presented. In Section 4, classification using spectral-domain invariant (LTI) system
features is detailed. In Section 5, the classifier performances X∞
y[n] = r[k]h[n − k]. (4)
are evaluated by an extensive set of simulations. Finally, k=−∞
Section 6 concludes the paper. Assuming coefficient C = 1 and put h[n] = s[n0 − n] in (4).
X∞
II. SIGNAL CLASSIFICATION WITH WGN y[n] = r[k]s[n0 − n + k]. (5)
k=−∞
The optimal classification of deterministic signals with WGN
has been widely studied ([11] and [40]). In literature, thermal For r[n] = 0 except
P for 1 ≤ n ≤ L, the filter output at
noise is usually modeled as WGN. If we assume that LPI n = n0 is y[n] = Lk=1 r[k]s[k], which is equal to the optimal
radar signal is corrupted with additive WGN, we can adapt classifier given in (3).

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 A. Yildirim, S. Kiranyaz: 1D CNNs Versus Automatic Classifiers for Known LPI Radar Signals
The classifier expressed in (3) is easy to implement; how-
ever, it is not suitable for real-life problems. It may not be pos-
sible to detect the time of arrival of the received signal (r[n])
accurately. In other words, one cannot know the appropriate
time, i.e. n0 , to sample the output signal (y[n]). Since the
radar signals are repetitive one can buffer the shifted versions
of the noise added si ’s, i.e. r[n], in ESM receiver. In this
case, the general form of the matched filter and then the peak
detection method can resolve this issue. As stated earlier,
MF is time-shift tolerant. The general form of MF is given
in (6).
XL
yi [n] = r[k]si [k − n].
k=1
We can first determine the maximum values (peaks) in signals
(yi [n]’s) as,
αi = max{ yi [n] : n = 1, .., 2L − 1},
and then we can obtain the maximum of αi ’s as expressed
below:
αmax = max{ αi : i = 0..M − 1},
where the ith signal, i.e. si , which the αmax is achieved will be
the output of the classifier.
III. 1D CONVOLUTIONAL NEURAL NETWORKS
Similar to their conventional 2D counterparts, in 1D CNNs
the input layer is a passive layer where the raw 1D signal is
fed to, while the output layer is a dense layer with the number
of neurons equal to the number of classes. The dense layers
are identical to Multi-Layer Perceptrons and thus sometimes
called ‘‘MLP layers’’. A 1D-CNN configuration can be set
a priori by the following hyper-parameters:
1) The number of hidden CNN and MLP layers/neurons.
2) The kernel size in each CNN layer.
3) Pooling (down-sampling) factor in each CNN layer.
4) The pooling and activation functions.
As shown in FIGURE 1, the 1D CNN configuration with
four CNN and two dense (MLP) layers are used in this
study where the kernel size is 21 and the down-sampling
factor is 6 in each CNN layer. The main difference between
1D and 2D CNNs, is that the 1D arrays are replaced by
the 2D matrices for both kernels and feature maps. This
is the major advantage of 1D CNNs which can also result
in a low computational complexity since the only opera-
tion with a significant cost is a sequence of 1D convolu-
tions which are simply linear weighted sums of two 1D
arrays. Such a linear operation during the Forward and
Back-Propagation operations can effectively be executed in
parallel. In either variant, the convolutional (CNN) layers
process the raw data and ‘‘learn to extract’’ such features
that are used in the classification task performed by dense
layers. As a result, both feature extraction and classification
operations are fused into one process that can be optimized to
maximize the classification performance. In the figure, each
CNN layer has 16 neurons, which is shown as 16 × 1362,
180536
(6)
FIGURE 1. The 1D CNN configuration with 4 CNN and 2 dense (MLP)
layers is used in this study. The kernel size is 21 and the down-sampling
factor ss = 6.
(7) 16 × 233, etc. over each layer. The input segment size is,
4 × 2048 = 8,192 samples. When 1D convolution is per-
formed with a 1D kernel of 1×21, the input-map size will be:
8,192 – 21 +1 = 8,172. After the 6x sub-sampling (pooling),
(8) the output map size will, therefore, be, 8,172 / 6 = 1362 and
so on. All network parameters were initialized randomly with
Uniform distribution, i.e., ∼U(-0.1, 0.1). The details of both
1D forward propagation (1D-FP) and Back-Propagation (BP)
are detailed in Appendix A. For further details, the Readers
are encouraged to refer to the comprehensive survey in [33]
and [34].
IV. CLASSIFICATION USING SPECTRAL DOMAIN
FEATURES
The Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) is a fundamental
transformation, which is used to perform spectral analysis in
many practical applications. The skewness, the kurtosis, and
the energy of dominant frequency are some of the features
that can be extracted from the spectrum of a noisy radar
signal.
A. THE DISCRETE FOURIER TRANSFORM
The N-points DFT transforms a signal window of N samples
{x[n]} := x[0], x[1], . . . , x[N − 1] into the spectral domain
of N complex numbers known as DFT coefficients, {X [k]} :=
X [0], X [1], . . . , X [N − 1]. DFT approximates the Discrete
time Fourier Transform with a finite frequency resolution and
is expressed as [41],
N −1
X j2π
X [k] = x [n] e− N kn
0 ≤ k ≤ N − 1, (9)
n=0
where N is the DFT size.
We have used the N-point window of a real radar signal, i.e.
r[n], as the input to DFT and compute the magnitude spec-
trum. Since the DFT of a real signal is conjugate symmetric
the kth bin in the DFT of a real-valued sequence has the same
magnitude as the (N-k)th bin. To avoid redundancy, we can use
the first (N /2) DFT magnitudes, |Xk | , k = 0, 1, 2, . . . , N2 −1
for feature extraction in the spectral domain.
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B. FEATURE EXTRACTION where the ith signal, i.e. si , which the i∗ is achieved is the
1) SKEWNESS decision of our classifier.
In Probability Theory and Statistics, skewness (the third
standardized moment) is a measure of the asymmetry of V. SIMULATION RESULTS
the probability distribution of a real-valued random variable The radar signals [44] used in simulations are presented in
about its mean. The skewness of a distribution is defined as, TABLE 1.
"  # In the simulations, 1024 frames from each signal are gener-
X −µ 3 E[(X − µ)3 ] ated each of which is corrupted by additive WGN according
Skew [X ] = E = , (10)
σ (E[(X − µ)2 ])3/2 to 61 SNR levels (-40 dB to 20 dB with a step size of 1 dB).
Therefore, the total of 1024 × 8 signals (r[n]’s) are classi-
where µ is the mean of X, σ is the standard deviation of X,
fied at each SNR level and the corresponding classification
E is the expectation operator.
accuracies (Pc’s) are computed. The results are illustrated in
The skewness, sk, of the signal, |Xk |, can be approximated
FIGURE 2.
as,
For CNN classifier 1024 frames are used for both training
1 PN /2−1
N /2 k=0 (|Xk | − µX )3 and testing. For classification, we have combined 4 frames
sk = q 3 , (11) each of which has 2048 samples into a segment of 8192 sam-
1 PN /2−1
N /2 k=0 (|Xk | − µX ) 2 ples. We used a compact 1D CNN in all experiments with
only four hidden CNN layers and one hidden MLP layers,
where µX is the sample mean of |Xk | . in order to achieve the utmost computational efficiency for
both training and particularly for real-time radar signal clas-
2) KURTOSIS sification. The 1D CNN used in all experiments has only
In Probability Theory and Statistics, kurtosis (the fourth stan- 16 neurons in all (hidden) CNN and MLP layers. The out-
dardized moment) is a measure of the ‘‘tailedness’’ of the put (MLP) layer size is 8 since this is an 8-class problem.
probability distribution of a real-valued random variable. The The kernel size of the CNN is 21 and the sub-sampling
kurtosis of a distribution is defined as, factor is 6. Accordingly, the sub-sampling factor for the last
CNN-layer is adaptively set to 13. We used the Stochastic
"  #
X −µ 4 E[(X − µ)4 ]
Kurt [X ] = E = , (12) Gradient Descent optimization method for Back-Propagation
σ (E[(X − µ)]2 )2
(BP) training with the learning factor, ε = 10−3 . We have
where µ is the mean of X, σ is the standard deviation of X, performed 200 epochs in a BP run and 5 individual BP runs
E is the expectation operator. for each noise level. The best 1D CNN configuration that
The kurtosis, ku, of the signal, |Xk |, can be approximated reached the lowest classification error has been selected for
as, test-set evaluation.
1 PN /2−1
For illustration purposes, TABLE 2 presents some noise
N /2 k=0 (|Xk | − µX )4 corrupted signals and their matched filter outputs for several
ku =  2 . (13)
SNR levels. The second column in TABLE 2 illustrates noise
1 PN /2−1
N /2 k=0 (|X k | − µX )2
added s5 , i.e. r[n], the third and last columns illustrate the
filter outputs (6) where the impulse responses are equal to
3) ENERGY OF THE DOMINANT FREQUENCY s5 [−n] and s6 [−n], respectively. According to the sample MF
The energy of the dominant frequency (fe) in the signal |Xk | outputs given in TABLE 2, at SNR = −30 dB, the MFB
calculated as, will misclassify the signal, since the maximum value of the
fe = (max{ |X k | : k = 0..N /2 − 1})2 . (14) signal |y6 [n] | is higher than the maximum value of the signal
|y5 [n] |. At SNR = −10 dB and 10dB, the maximum value
C. THE MINIMUM DISTANCE CLASSIFIER of the signal |y5 [n] | is higher than the maximum value of
The minimum distance (MD) classifier ([42] and [43]), where the signal |y6 [n] |. Obviously, the other six MFB outputs are
the distance is defined as an index of similarity so that the also computed to accomplish the final classification of the
minimum distance is identical to the maximum similarity, signal.
is used to decide which class the received signal belongs to. The computational complexity of the classifiers is pre-
Each particular feature given in Section 3.2 is extracted sented in TABLE 3, where M = 8 is the number of signals
from the received signal, i.e. r[n], and from each of the to classify and N = 2048 is the frame size.
reference signals, si [n] , as expressed in (1). For each feature, For the computational complexity analysis of 1D CNNs the
the distances between the value obtained for r[n] and the total number of operations at each 1D CNN layer (ignoring
reference values (values obtained for the same feature from the sub-sampling) is first computed and then cumulate them
si [n]’s) are computed. The minimum distance is obtained as to find the overall computational complexity. During each
expressed below: FP, at a CNN layer, l, the number of connections to the
previous layer is, N l−1 N l . the number of connections to
i∗ = arg min{ di = |Fr −F si | : i = 0..M − 1}, (15) the previous layer is, N l−1 N l , there is an individual linear

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TABLE 1. The radar signals.

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TABLE 1. (Continued.) The radar signals.

TABLE 2. Some sample MF outputs at different snr levels.

convolution is performed, which is a linear weighted sum. Let
sl l−1 and wl l−1 and be the vector sizes of the previous layer
output, sl−1 l−1
k , and kernel (weight), wki , respectively. Ignoring
the boundary conditions, a linear convolution consists of

2
sl l−1 wl l−1 multiplications and sl l−1 additions from a sin-
gle connection. Ignoring the bias addition, the total number

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 A. Yildirim, S. Kiranyaz: 1D CNNs Versus Automatic Classifiers for Known LPI Radar Signals

VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we evaluated different radar signal classifiers for
ESM systems. The classifier performances were compared
with each other, starting from very low SNR levels, i.e.
−40 dB. The experimental results have shown that when the
signals are assumed to be known, it is possible to achieve a
high classification performance even at very low SNR levels
by the optimal classifier (OPT). Among all the unsupervised
classifiers MFB is robust to signal time shifts. The results
have confirmed that the performance of the MFB is better
than the minimum distance classifier using spectral-domain
features, however, the computational complexity of MFB is
the highest. The performances and the computational com-
plexities of MD-SKW and MD-KUR classifiers are close to
each other. The performance of MD-FRE classifier is better
FIGURE 2. The classification accuracy plots at each SNR level. than MD-SKW and MD-KUR classifiers at SNR levels from
−20 dB to 1 dB, but when SNR >1 dB, its performance
gain diminishes. The MD-FRE classifier requires the least
TABLE 3. The computational complexity.
computational power and thus it can be a convenient choice
for low-power applications at the SNR levels from −20 dB to
1 dB. We can conclude that a proper classifier with the least
computational complexity can be used when the SNR level
is assumed to be known or approximated, i.e., KUR or SKW
can conveniently be used when SNR >0 dB. On the other
hand, under very low SNR levels (SNR < −15 dB), MFB is
the best choice among all.
Finally, in this study, compact 1D CNNs have been pro-
posed the first time for the radar signal classification and the
results have demonstrated that they can achieve a compatible
performance level along with the MFB classifiers with a
slight margin. Their unique capability is to learn directly from
the raw signal that avoids the need of designing handcrafted
pre-processing and feature extraction in advance. Moreover,
they exhibit significant computational and feasibility advan-
tages over their deep (2D) counterparts. Thus, especially
when the data is scarce and the number of radar classes
increases, they can serve as a viable option for this problem
even at very low SNR levels (e.g. −16 dB). In the future,
we shall investigate different CNN architectures and models
of multiplications and additions in the layer l will, therefore, to further improve the performance so that high classification
be: accuracies can be achieved even below −20dB SNR level.
l−1
 2
N (mul)l =N l−1 N l sl wl l−1 , N (add)l = N l−1 N l sl l−1 APPENDIX
(16) The adaptive 1D CNN implementation used in this study is
illustrated in FIGURE 3. In this illustration, the 1D filters
So, during FP the total number of multiplications and have a size of 1 × 3 and the pooling (sub-sampling) factor
additions, T (mul), and T (add), on a L CNN layers will be, is 2 where the kth neuron in the hidden CNN layer, l, first
performs a sequence of convolutions, the sum of which is
L 2
passed through the activation function, f , followed by the
X l−1

TFP (mul) = N l−1 N l sl wl l−1 , TFP (add)
sub-sampling operation. In this implementation, we fused the
l=1
L
two distinct layers (convolution and pooling) into a single
X layer, called ‘‘CNN layer. As a next step, the CNN layers
= N l−1 N l sl l−1 (17)
process the raw 1D data and ‘‘learn to extract’’ such fea-
l=1
tures which are used in the classification task performed by
Obviously, TFP (add) is insignificant compared to the dense layers (or MLP layers). In this way, both feature
TFP (mul). extraction and classification operations are fused into one

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A. Yildirim, S. Kiranyaz: 1D CNNs Versus Automatic Classifiers for Known LPI Radar Signals

output layer for the input p; the mean-squared error (MSE),

Ep , can be expressed as follows:
 h i0  XNL 
p 2

Ep = MSE t , y1 , · · · , yNL
p L L
= yLi − ti (20)
i=1
To find the derivative of Ep by each network parameter,
the delta error, 1lk = ∂El should be computed. Specifically,
∂xk
for updating the bias of that neuron and all weights of the
neurons in the preceding layer, one can use the chain rule of
derivatives as,
∂E ∂E
= 1lk yl−1
i and l = 1lk (21)
FIGURE 3. Three consecutive hidden CNN layers of a 1D CNN [22]. ∂wik
l−1 ∂bk

process that can be optimized to maximize the classification So, from the first MLP layer to the last CNN layer, the regular
performance. This is the major advantage of 1D CNNs which (scalar) BP is simply performed as,
can also result in a low computational complexity since the Nl+1
X ∂E ∂x l+1 Nl+1
∂E X
only operation with a significant cost is a sequence of 1D = 1sl
k = i
= 1l+1
i wki .
l
(22)
convolutions which are simply linear weighted sums of two ∂slk i=1
∂xi
l+1 ∂sl
k i=1
1D arrays. Such a linear operation during the Forward and Once the first BP is performed from the next layer, l+1, to the
Back-Propagation operations can effectively be executed in current layer, l, then one can carry on the BP to the input
parallel. delta of the CNN
layer l, 1lk . Let zero-order up-sampled map
This is also an adaptive implementation since the CNN be: uslk = up slk , then the delta error can be expressed as
topology will allow the variations in the input layer dimension follows:
in such a way that the sub-sampling factor of the output CNN
∂E ∂yl ∂E ∂uslk 0  l     
layer is tuned adaptively. Forward and Back-Propagation in 1lk = l kl = f xk = up 1sl
k β f 0
xkl
CNN layers will be next. ∂yk ∂xk ∂uslk ∂ylk
(23)
A. FORWARD- AND BACK-PROPAGATION IN CNN-LAYERS
where β = (ss)−1 . Then, the BP of the delta error
In each CNN-layer, 1D forward propagation (1D-FP) is  6
1slk ←−1l+1
i can be expressed as,
expressed as follows:
Nl−1   Nl+1   
X
1slk = conv1Dz 1l+1
i , rev wki
X l
xkl = blk + conv1D wl−1
ik , si
l−1
(18) (24)
i=1 i=1

where xkl is defined as the input, blk is defined as the bias of where rev (.) is used to reverse the array and conv1Dz (., .) is
the k th neuron at layer l, sl−1 is the output of the ith neuron at used to perform full 1D convolution with zero-padding. The
i
l−1
layer l − 1, wik is the kernel from the ith neuron at layer l − weight and bias sensitivities can be expressed as follows:
1 to the k th neuron at layer l. conv1D (., .) is used to perform ∂E   ∂E X
= conv1D s l
k , 1l+1
i and l = 1lk (n). (25)
‘in-valid’ 1D convolution without zero-padding. Therefore, ∂wik
l ∂bk n
the dimension of the input array, xkl , is less than the dimension
When the weight and bias sensitivities are computed, they can
i . The intermediate output, yk , can
of the output arrays, sl−1 l
l
be expressed bypassing the input xk through the activation be used to update biases and weights with the learning factor,
function, f (.), as, ε as,
∂E
ik (t + 1) = wik (t) − ε
wl−1 and blk (t + 1)
  l−1
ylk = f xkl and slk = ylk ↓ ss (19)
∂wl−1
ik
where slk stands for the output of the kth neuron of the layer, ∂E
= bk (t) − ε l .
l
(26)
l, and ‘‘↓ ss’’ represents the down-sampling operation with a ∂bk
scalar factor, ss. The forward and back-propagation in hidden CNN layers are
The back-propagation (BP) algorithm can be summarized illustrated in FIGURE 4. The output gradient of the kth neuron
as follows. Back propagating the error starts from the output at the CNN layer l, 1slk , is formed by back-propagating all
MLP-layer. Assume l = 1 for the input layer and l = L
the delta errors, 1il+1 , at the next layer, l + 1, by using
for the output layer. Let NL be the number of classes in the
Eq. (24), while the forward and back-propagation between
database; then, hfor an input vector p, and its target and output
i0 the last hidden CNN layer and the first hidden MLP layer are
vectors, t and y1 , · · · , yNL , respectively. With that, in the
p L L
summarized in FIGURE 5.

VOLUME 8, 2020 180541

 A. Yildirim, S. Kiranyaz: 1D CNNs Versus Automatic Classifiers for Known LPI Radar Signals
FIGURE 4. Forward and back-propagation in hidden CNN layers.
FIGURE 5. Forward and back-propagation between the last hidden CNN
layer and the first hidden MLP layer.
Consequently, the iterative flow of BP for the 1D raw
signals in the training set can be stated as follows:
1) Initialize weights and biases (e.g., randomly, ∼U(-0.1,
0.1)) of the network.
2) For each BP iteration DO:
a) For each PCG beat in the dataset, DO:
i. FP: Forward propagate from the input layer to
the output layer to find outputs of each neuron
at each layer, sli , ∀i ∈ [1, Nl ] , and ∀l ∈
[1, L].
ii. BP: Compute delta error at the output layer
and back-propagate it to first hidden layer
to compute the delta errors, 1lk , ∀k ∈
[1, Nl ] , and ∀l ∈ [1, L].
iii. PP: Post-process to compute the weight and
bias sensitivities using Eq. (25).
iv. Update: Update the weights and biases by the
(accumulation of) sensitivities scaled with the
learning factor, ε using Eq. (26).
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by the Qatar National Research
Fund (QNRF) through the ongoing project under Grant
NPRP11S-0108-180228.
180542
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ALPER YILDIRIM (Member, IEEE) received the
B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Bilkent
University, Turkey, in 1996, the M.Sc. degree
in digital and computer systems from the Tam-
pere University of Technology, Finland, in 2001,
and the Ph.D. degree in electronics engineering
from Ankara University, in 2007. He received the
Associate Professor degree from Inter-University
Committee, Turkey, in 2017. He was a Design
Engineer with Nokia Mobile Phones, Tampere.
He is currently a Chief Research Scientist with the Scientific and Techno-
logical Research Council of Turkey (Tübitak), Ankara. His research interests
include digital signal processing, electronic warfare, and radar systems and
optimization.
SERKAN KIRANYAZ (Senior Member, IEEE) is
currently a Professor with Qatar University, Doha,
Qatar. He published two books, five book chap-
ters, more than 80 journal articles in high impact
journals, and 100 papers in international con-
ferences. He made contributions on evolutionary
optimization, machine learning, bio-signal analy-
sis, computer vision with applications to recogni-
tion, classification, and signal processing. He has
coauthored the papers which have nominated or
received the Best Paper Award in ICIP 2013, ICPR 2014, ICIP 2015, and
IEEE TSP 2018. He had the most-popular articles in the years 2010 and 2016,
and most-cited article, in 2018, in the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL
ENGINEERING. From 2010 to 2015, he authored the fourth most-cited article of
Neural Networks journal. His theoretical contributions to advance the current
state of the art in modeling and representation, targeting high long-term
impact, while algorithmic, system level design and implementation issues
target medium and long-term challenges for the next five to ten years. He is
in particular aims at investigating scientific questions and inventing cutting
edge solutions in personalized biomedicine which is in one of the most
dynamic areas where science combines with technology to produce efficient
signal and information processing systems. His research team has received
the 2nd and 1st places in PhysioNet Grand Challenges 2016 and 2017,
among 48 and 75 international teams, respectively. He received the Research
Excellence Award and the Merit Award of Qatar University, in 2019.
180543