It is shown that in a situation where a radar target is distant enough from the radar and is included in a natural or artificial clutter environment in such a manner that the conventional detection methods fail, it is possible to improve the radar detection performance by using appropriate signal processing on two orthogonal polarization states. A CFAR (constant false alarm rate) polarimetric detection system based on the study of the polarization difference between clutter and target is proposed. Since the polarization state of the clutter echoes fluctuates slowly from cell to cell, an autoregressive model can be applied to the components of the polarization vector to predict the detection thresholds needed to follow the polarization state variation. The detection thresholds are determined to maintain a false alarm probability equal to 10/sup -6/. The presence of a target registers as a significant variation of the estimation error of the polarization vector. Results obtained from measurements of simple and canonical targets with artificial clutter are presented, and these results validate the principle of polarimetric detection.<>


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    Title :

    Optimal polarimetric detection of radar target in a slowly fluctuating environment of clutter


    Contributors:
    Pottier, E. (author) / Saillard, J. (author)


    Publication date :

    1990-11-01


    Size :

    405496 byte




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English