Artificial Neural Networks and Deep Learning Techniques Applied to Radar Target Detection: A Review

Radar target detection (RTD) is a fundamental but important process of the radar system, which is designed to differentiate and measure targets from a complex background. Deep learning methods have gained great attention currently and have turned out to be feasible solutions in radar signal processing. Compared with the conventional RTD methods, deep learning-based methods can extract features automatically and yield more accurate results. Applying deep learning to RTD is considered as a novel concept. In this paper, we review the applications of deep learning in the field of RTD and summarize the possible limitations. This work is timely due to the increasing number of research works published in recent years. We hope that this survey will provide guidelines for future studies and applications of deep learning in RTD and related areas of radar signal processing.