Performance analysis of polarimetric radar detectors

Choosing a polarimetric radar detector which exhibits well on detection performance and is easy to implement simultaneously is significant to the polarimetric radar target detection in reality. In this paper, we analyze and compare the detection performances and implementation difficulties of optimal polarimetric detector (OPD), polarimetric whitening filter (PWF), optimal span detector (OSD), polarimetric matched filter (PMF), polarimetric maximization synthesis detector (PMSD) and single channel detector (SCD) to find which one is optimal to be used in engineering. The clutter and target echoes in three polarimetric channels (HH, HV and VV) are modeled at first. Then we present the test statistics of the six detectors and analyze their implementation difficulties. We present the ideal detection performances of the six polarimetric detectors by Monte Carlo simulations. The results show that PWF, OSD and PMSD make a better compromise between ideal detection performance and implementation difficulty than other polarimetric detectors. Thus, we further compare the adaptive detection performances of PWF and OSD with the detection performance of PMSD under various circumstances. Simulation results demonstrate that PWF performs best and is optimal to be used in engineering.