Polarization Detection of a Fluctuating Radar Target

A mathematical framework is developed which allows a polarization description of a received radar signal for the purpose of target-clutter discrimination. Statistical models that include all changes in the polarization of an incident radar signal upon reflection are also developed for both targets and clutter. Using these models, a detector that thresholds various functions of the polarization-related parameters known as Stokes parameters is analyzed, and its performance is compared with the performance of existing detectors. Two constant false-alarm rate detection statistics are found, one of which shows an improvement in performance over the pseudocoherent detector that thresholds the sine of the relative phase between two orthogonally received electric fields.