A New Statistical Model of High Resolution SAR Clutter in Raw Data Domain: Theoretical Results and Experimental Validation

Inhalt:
A new statistical model of high resolution SAR clutter based on range-compressed but azimuth (Doppler)-uncompressed data (raw data) is proposed. The new SAR clutter model can better describe the longer tail of the amplitude probability density function of high resolution SAR clutter than conventional K-distribution. The main theoretical results of the new model are derived. The new model, when its speckle component was assumed to be Weibull distribution, is found to be in excellent agreement with experimental recorded live data collected by a high resolution X band airborne SAR. Parameters of the new model and the K distribution are both estimated from the recorded SAR clutter raw data using method of moments. The chisquared goodness-of-fit test further confirmed that that the new model can better match the experimental histograms than K distribution.