Polarimetric detection of targets in inhomogeneous clutter

M. HURTADO; A. NEHORAI

Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, MA, USA

Workshop; Adaptive Sensor Array Processing Workshop; 2007

Polarization diversity in radar is useful to detect targets,particularly when Doppler discrimination is not possible.We introduce a new polarimetric radarmodel that includesthe realistic dependence of the clutter reflections on thetransmitted signal. We then develop a statistical polarimetricdetection test, robust to heavy inhomogeneous clutter.We prove that the detector’s false-alarm rate is invariantto the space and time variabilities of the clutter; hence, ithas the constant false-alarm (CFAR) property, while stillmaintaining a good probability of detection. We demonstratethe improved performance of the proposed detectorin comparison with existing detectors using numerical examplesand real data.