CFAR TARGET DETECTION IN GROUND SAR IMAGE BASED ON KK DISTRIBUTION

Abstract

This paper deals with the problem of constant false alarm rate (CFAR) target detection in high-resolution ground synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images based on KK distribution. For the parameter estimation of KK distribution, the semi-experiential algorithm is analyzed flrstly. Then a new estimation algorithm based on the particle swarm optimization (PSO) is proposed, which takes the discrepancies between the histogram of the clutter data and probability density function (PDF) of KK distribution at some selected points as the cost function to search for the optimal parameter values using PSO algorithm. The performance of the two algorithms is compared using Monte-Carlo simulation using the simulated data sets generated under difierent conditions; and the estimation results validate the better performance of the new algorithm. Then the KK distribution, which is proposed for spiky sea clutter originally, is applied to model the real ground SAR clutter data. The goodness-of-flt test clearly show that the KK distribution is able to model the ground SAR clutter much better than some common used model, such as standard K- distribution and Gamma, etc. On this basis, a global CFAR target detection algorithm is presented. The detection threshold is calculated numerically through the cumulative density function (CDF) of KK distribution. Comparing the amplitude of every SAR image pixel with this threshold, the potential targets in ground SAR images can be located efiectively. Then target clustering is implemented to eliminate the false alarm and obtain more accurate target regions. The detection results of the proposed algorithm in a typical ground SAR image show that it has better performance than the detector based on G 0 distribution.