The paper introduces two novelties, with respect to the state of the art, o
n the analysis of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image formation. The first
refers to the effects of non-homogeneous terrain (i.e., different types of
terrain in the remotely sensed scene), while the second considers the pres
ence of vegetation on the terrain. The nonhomogeneity of the terrain is acc
ounted for by resorting to the K-distributed clutter model. The model is ma
de of two terms: the texture, which accounts for the spatial variability of
the scene contents, and the speckle, that codes the fluctuations in the im
aged cell. The presence of vegetation on the terrain is introduced by a sui
table Doppler spectrum of the speckle. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All r
ights reserved.