Statistical characterization and modeling of high resolution COSMO/SkyMed SAR images over urban areas

As less attention has been devoted to land scattering in high-resolution SAR, especially satellite image, a comprehensive statistical analysis of COSMO/SkyMed SAR data is carried out in this paper. The images of different land types (such as bare soil, grassland, water, forestland, urban area and farmland) are analyzed by means of histogram, kurtosis and covariance estimation. As the experimental data over urban areas show impulsive characteristics that correspond to underlying heavy-tailed distributions which are clearly non-Rayleigh, some alternative distributions have been suggested and discussed such as the Weibull, lognormal, Gamma and K-distribution. Furthermore, the Alpha-stable distribution is introduced for modeling SAR images over urban areas. And by comparing with other amplitude distribution models, its performance is demonstrated to be better than others.