A physical model for high resolution radar sea clutter

Floriane Madeleine Schreiber (1, 2) , Sébastien Angelliaume (2) , Charles-Antoine Guérin (1)

1 MIO - Institut méditerranéen d'océanologie
2 DEMR, ONERA [Salon-de-Provence]

Sea clutter intensity for high-resolution imaging radars is known to deviate from the classical exponential probability distribution which is observed at low resolution. We use a physical description of sea clutter based on the Two-Scale Model to obtain a relevant expression of the clutter distribution at high-resolution. We test this model with a set of airborne SAR data and show that it provides excellent fits of the intensity distribution in the two polarizations with only one parameter, which is interpreted as a surface mean square slope and is sea state dependent.

Mots clés: RADAR MARIN; ECHO

Domaines: Interfaces continentales, environnement; Océan, Atmosphère; Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]

Floriane Madeleine Schreiber, Sébastien Angelliaume, Charles-Antoine Guérin. A physical model for high resolution radar sea clutter. 2019 International Radar Conference (RADAR), Sep 2019, TOULON, France. pp.1-4, ⟨10.1109/RADAR41533.2019.171408⟩. ⟨hal-02615119⟩