Statistical physical model for foliage clutter in ultra-wideband synthetic aperture radar images

Analyzing foliage-penetrating (FOPEN) ultra-wideband synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images is a challenging problem owing to the noisy and impulsive nature of foliage clutter. Indeed, many target-detection algorithms for FOPEN SAR data are characterized by high false-alarm rates. In this work, a statistical–physical model for foliage clutter is proposed that explains the presence of outliers in the data and suggests the use of symmetric alpha-stable (SαS) distributions for accurate clutter modeling. Furthermore, with the use of general assumptions of the noise sources and propagation conditions, the proposed model relates the parameters of the SαS model to physical parameters such as the attenuation coefficient and foliage density.