NUMERICAL-STUDIES OF THE DETECTION OF TARGETS EMBEDDED IN CLUTTER BY USING ANGULAR-CORRELATION FUNCTION AND ANGULAR-CORRELATION IMAGING

We study a detection method for targets embedded in a clutter environm ent based on the 3-D angular correlation function (ACF). The clutter i s modeled by randomly distributed small scatterers. The total scattere d wave field at the receiver is calculated using Monte Carlo simulatio ns, and is used for the calculation of ACF and angular correlation ima ging. The angular correlation imaging consists of calculating the angu lar correlation function with focusing on desired locations. Compared with the traditional SAR (field) imaging, the correlation imaging has two advantages: 1) it has finer resolution than the field imaging, and 2) it can smear the speckle due to random scattering to make the targ et more conspicuous. We will show the angular correlation imaging meth od can be added to synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems to make them more effective in obtaining information about the targets and suppres sing clutter. We will also discuss general methods of correlation imag ing. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.