Demonstration of reduced false alarm rates using simulated L-band polarimetric SAR imagery of concealed targets

Coherent scattering calculations have been performed to produce L-Band SAR images of targets below a forest canopy. The calculations, which are fully polarimetric, are described. High clutter levels permit detection of all concealed targets only at the cost of a very high false alarm rate. The simulated imagery is analysed using the entropy-alpha polarimetric decomposition technique. Using alpha and entropy in addition to a co-polar intensity channel, and combining the results of separate CFAR algorithms, the number of false alarms is reduced dramatically. The consequences for application of polarimetric SAR to concealed target detection and identification are considered.