Estimation of the average contrast of a buried object

The problem of estimation of the average contrast of a buried object is for mulated as a nonlinear inverse scattering problem. An effective scattering model of reduced dimensionality is applied in order to make the inversion s cheme numerically fast and well-posed. It is shown that a good estimate of the object's average constitution is obtained if L-1-type metric is employe d and the two-media background is replaced with the average homogeneous one . The effective scattering model is used in combination with Synthetic aper ture radar (SAR) imaging, adding significant value to conventional SAR imag es.