New SAR Target Imaging Algorithm based on Oblique Projection for Clutter Reduction

Frédéric Brigui (1) , Guillaume Ginolhac (2) , Laetitia Thirion (3) , Philippe Forster (4)

1 Temasek life sciences laboratory [Singapore]
2 LISTIC - Laboratoire d'Informatique, Systèmes, Traitement de l'Information et de la Connaissance
3 SONDRA - Sondra, CentraleSupélec, Université Paris-Saclay (COmUE)
4 SATIE - Systèmes et Applications des Technologies de l'Information et de l'Energie

We have developed a new Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) algorithm based on physical models for the detection of a Man-Made Target (MMT) embedded in strong clutter (trunks in a forest). The physical models for the MMT and the clutter are represented by low-rank subspaces and are based on scattering and polarimetric properties. Our SAR algorithm applies the oblique projection of the received signal along the clutter subspace onto the target subspace. We compute its statistical performance in terms of probabilities of detection and false alarms. The performances of the proposed SAR algorithm are improved compared to those obtained with existing SAR algorithms: the MMT detection is greatly improved and the clutter is rejected. We also studied the robustness of our new SAR algorithm to interference modeling errors. Results on real FoPen (Foliage Penetration) data showed the usefulness of this approach.

Mots clés: FoPen detection; statistical performance; polarimetry; physical-based models; SAR algorithms; subspace methods; oblique projection

Domaines: Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]; Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]

Frédéric Brigui, Guillaume Ginolhac, Laetitia Thirion, Philippe Forster. New SAR Target Imaging Algorithm based on Oblique Projection for Clutter Reduction. IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, 2014, 50 (2), pp.1118 - 1137. ⟨10.1109/TAES.2014.110287⟩. ⟨hal-01059721⟩