High resolution SAR clutter textural analysis

Coherent images of natural scenes formed using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) often possess textural properties associated with the clutter. Due to an improvement in the Defence Research Agency (DRA) X-band SAR, very high resolution imagery is now available for analysis. This increase in resolution has visibly modified the textural properties of observed clutter forcing a re-examination of the statistical image properties. The results of the study are given. Areas of imagery that appear homogenous have their single point distribution properties measured. Comparisons with known distributions that often fit similar data are made and shown to give poor agreement. Reasons for poor agreement, such as inhomogeneity, are investigated through the use of clutter simulations. K and lognormal mixture distributions are shown to offer good agreement with the observed distributions and also validate the premise of homogeneity for the regions considered.