Polarimetric Target Decomposition Based on Attributed Scattering Center Model for Synthetic Aperture Radar Targets

Abstract

In this letter, a novel polarimetric target decomposition (PTD) method based on the attributed scattering center (ASC) model is proposed for man-made targets in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. By extracting attributed parameters, polarimetric characteristics of targets can be exploited by performing PTD on the extracting parameters of ASCs instead of pixels in conventional PTD algorithms. As a result, the integrity of target components is enhanced, leading to a reliable analysis on the polarimetric scattering mechanisms of SAR targets. In the proposal, an attributed parameters extraction method based on joint exploitation of multiple polarimetric channels and a target discriminating method based on a constant-false-alarm threshold are developed to improve its robustness in strong noise scenarios. Experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.