Using filtering effects to identify objects

Reflecting signals off of targets is a method widely used to locate objects, but the reflected signal also contains information that can be used to identify the object. In radar or sonar, the signal amplitudes used are small enough that only linear effects are present, so we can consider the effect of the target on the signal as a linear filter. Using the known effects of linear filters on chaotic signals, we can create a reference that allows us to match a particular target to a particular reflected signal. Furthermore, if some parts of this "filter" vary only slowly as the aspect angle of the object changes, we can produce a reference that averages out the parts that are highly angle dependent so that one reference can be used to identify the target over a range of angles.