Ir. Joughin et al., MAXIMUM-LIKELIHOOD-ESTIMATION OF K-DISTRIBUTION PARAMETERS FOR SAR DATA, IEEE transactions on geoscience and remote sensing, 31(5), 1993, pp. 989-999
The K distribution has proven to be a promising and useful model for b
ackscattering statistics in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery. Ho
wever, most studies to date have relied on a method of moments techniq
ue involving second and fourth moments to estimate the parameters of t
he Ii distribution. The variance of these parameter estimates is large
in cases where the sample size is small and/or the true distribution
of backscattered amplitude is highly non-Rayleigh. In this paper, we a
pply a maximum likelihood estimation method directly to the K distribu
tion. We consider the situation for single look SAR data as well as a
simplified model for multilook data. We investigate the accuracy and u
ncertainties in maximum likelihood parameter estimates as functions of
sample size and the parameters themselves. We find improved results c
ompared with those obtained by the method of moments for sample sizes
of 1000 or less. We also compare our results with those from a new met
hod given by Raghavan and from a nonstandard method of moments techniq
ue; maximum likelihood parameter estimates prove to be at least as acc
urate as those from the other estimators in all cases tested, and are
more accurate in most cases. Finally, we compare the simplified multil
ook model with nominally four-look SAR data acquired by the Jet Propul
sion Laboratory AIRSAR over sea ice in the Beaufort Sea during March 1
988. We find that the model fits data from both first-year and multiye
ar ice well and that backscattering statistics from each ice type are
moderately non Rayleigh. We note that the distributions for our data s
et differ too little between ice types to allow discrimination based o
n differing distribution parameters.