RCS Prediction of a Target Based on the Machine

Learning
Zhang Yuxin, Dong Chunlei, Meng Xiao, Guo Lixin
School of Physics
Xidian University
Xi’an 710071, China,
23201110152@stu.xidian.edu.cn; cldong@xidian.edu.cn; xmeng@xidian.edu.cn; lxguo@xidian.edu.cn

Abstract—This paper is based on the decision tree method in curve of the entire sequence with the change of pinch angle and
machine learning to predict the Radar Cross Section (RCS) of a azimuth angle is predicted. Fig. 1 shows the flowchart of the
complex target, where the original samples are simulated by decision tree algorithm. The decision tree algorithm typically
using the Shooting and Bouncing Rays (SBR) method. The includes three steps:
prediction method achieves good results and alleviates the
problem of traditional RCS computation being time-consuming • Feature selection. At each decision node, the algorithm
and expensive. A series of experimental analyses have been examines a specific attribute of the dataset and selects
conducted on missile and ship targets to evaluate the accuracy the best attribute as the current node. The data is split
and effectiveness of the RCS prediction model. The results into smaller subsets based on the attribute values, and
demonstrate that the decision tree method based on machine each split generates a child node.
learning is effective to predict the RCS of a target.
• Decision tree generation. The previous step is repeated
Keywords—machine learning; RCS prediction; SBR method; recursively until the data is split into only one category
or the stopping condition is met.
I. INTRODUCTION • Decision tree pruning. To avoid overfitting, decision
The Radar Cross Section (RCS) of a target has significant tree pruning is needed to remove unnecessary branches
application value in radar target identification[8], detection or nodes.
range estimation[7], target positioning and tracking[5][6], etc.
Common RCS simulation methods currently used include
Physical Optics (PO), Shooting and Bouncing Rays (SBR),
Method of Moments (MoM), Finite Difference Time Domain
(FDTD), etc. Among these methods, SBR has been considered
as an efficient tool for electromagnetic scattering computation
of the complex target. While its computational time usually
increases with the electric size of a target, therefore obtaining
RCS data of an electrically large complex target for various
radar parameters is still time-consuming.
In recent years, due to the rapid development of machine
learning, methods such as linear regression, logistic regression,
and SVM have been widely used in the prediction of
RCS[1][2][3][4]. Therefore, in this paper, we use the decision
tree algorithm in machine learning to predict the relationship
between the RCS of a target and the incident angle. Here, the
SBR method is employed to simulate the original data. In
addition, the prediction data are compared with the original
data. According to the comparison results, a high-precision Fig. 1. The flowchart of the decision tree algorithm.
prediction of the target RCS is achieved, which is meaningful
for the fast RCS generation of the complex targets. In this paper, we use a regression decision tree, and the loss
function commonly used is the mean square error (MSE),
whose calculation formula is shown in (1):
II. RCS PREDICTION METHOD BASED ON DECISION TREE
nsamples −1
The RCS prediction method used in this paper is the 1
decision tree algorithm in machine learning. By sampling some
MSE (y, yˆ ) =
nsamples
i=0
( yi − yˆ i ) 2 (1)
RCS as training data and establishing a decision tree model
based on the strategy of minimizing the loss function, the RCS

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the
Central Universities (Grant No. QTZX22161).
978-1-7335096-5-7© 2023 ACES

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 In the formula, yi represents the actual value, and yˆ i
represents the predicted value.

III. RESULT AND ANALYSIS

In this section, a series of experiments is conducted to
validate the accuracy and feasibility of the decision tree
method for RCS prediction of a target. The dataset used in this
section consists of 8 groups of data for ship and missile (c) (d)
targets, which include the variation of RCS with elevation
angle and azimuth angle under Ku-band and X-band. Fig. 2
shows the geometric models of the missile and ship. The

Radar Cross Section(dBsm)

specific information of the dataset is shown in Table I. The
RCS in the dataset includes four polarization methods: HH,
HV, VH, and VV, with an angular interval of 1° along θ and
φ.

(e) (f)

Fig. 3. The RCS interpolation prediction results for the full sequence of
different datasets. (a) RCS of the ship varying with azimuth angle, X-band.
(b) RCS of ship varying with azimuth angle, Ku-band. (c) RCS of ship
varying with pitch angle, X-band. (d) RCS of missile varying with azimuth
angle, X-band.(e)RCS of missile varying with pitch angle, X-band. (f) RCS of
(a) (b) missile varying with pitch angle, Ku-band.
Fig. 2. The geometric models of ships and missiles. (a) Missile. (b) Ship.

TABLE I. DATASET CONSTRUCTION

Target Angle(°) Frequency (GHz)

o o
θ = 60°, ϕ ∈ [0 ,360 ] f = 10,14
missile o o
θ ∈ [0 ,90 ], ϕ = 0° f = 10,14
o o
θ = 60°, ϕ ∈ [0 ,360 ] f = 10,14
Ship o o
(a) (b)
θ ∈ [0 ,90 ], ϕ = 0° f = 10,14

Fig. 3 shows the RCS interpolation prediction results for

Radar Cross Section(dBsm)

the full sequence of different datasets. The proportion of

training data is 0.6, and the results are smoothed with a 5°
interval. It can be seen that the prediction method performs
well on different RCS datasets. The best performance is
achieved in Fig.3 (e) with a root mean square error (RMSE) of
only 2.913dBsm.
(c) (d)
Comparison of Test Results

70 RMSE = 4.4044 original data

Fig. 4. The full sequence interpolation prediction results of the Ku-band RCS
predicted data
of a ship target. (a) The sampling rate is 0.8. (b) The sampling rate is 0.6. (c)
60
The sampling rate is 0.45. (d) The sampling rate is 0.3.
50

40
Fig. 4 shows the full sequence interpolation prediction
30
results of the Ku-band RCS of the ship target with different
20
training data sampling ratios. The sampling ratios of training
0 50 100 150 200 250
Incident Azimuth Angle(degree)
300 350 data are 0.8, 0.6, 0.45 and 0.3, respectively. As shown in Fig.4,
even with the RCS trained on only 27 angle values between 0-
(a) (b)
90°, the method can still accurately predict the RCS and
closely match the RCS values calculated by the SBR method,
with a RMSE of only 3.3833dBsm.

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(a) (b)
Fig. 5. The full sequence interpolation prediction results of the Ku-band
missile RCS with different sampling methods for azimuth angle change. (a)
The equidistant sampling (b) Random sampling with a sampling ratio of 0.3.
Fig. 5 presents the full sequence interpolation prediction
results of the Ku-band RCS of the missile target with different
sampling methods for azimuth angle change. The equidistant
sampling method with an interval of 2 are used in Fig.5(a), and
the random sampling with a sampling ratio of 0.3 are used in
Fig.5(b). As seen from the Fig.5, the RCS prediction results
obtained under the equal interval sampling method have
smaller RMSE. This is because when random sampling is used,
if the RCS at the peak point and its nearby angles are not
sampled, the training results for the peak will be greatly
discounted. Nevertheless, the above experiments with random
sampling also demonstrate the feasibility and accuracy of the
prediction method used in this paper.
IV. CONCLUSION
This paper utilizes the decision tree method to accurately
predict the RCS of targets over the full angle range, based on
the RCS results obtained under various conditions using the
SBR method. The purpose is to alleviate the problem of
difficulty in obtaining and high cost of target radar scattering
cross-sections over the full angle range. The results show that
the method used in this paper can stably and accurately predict
the target RCS sequence under various conditions. Even when
the training data sampling ratio is 0.3, the RMSE between the
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predicted target RCS and the RCS calculated by the SBR
method is only 3.833dBsm.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors thank the editors and reviewers for their
helpful and constructive suggestions.
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