Detecting Depolarizing Targets using a New Geometrical Perturbation Filter

Abstract:
Target detectors using polarimetry are often focused on single targets, since these are characterised more simply and in a deterministic way. The algorithm proposed in this paper is aimed at the more difficult problem of partial target detection (i.e. targets with any degree of polarisation). In order to carry out the detection we need to define a new feature vector starting from the covariance matrix, and then perform a perturbation method similar to the one implemented for detection of single targets. Validation against L-band fully polarimetric E-SAR data is provided with significant agreement with the expected results.