Polarization diversity for detecting targets in heavy inhomogeneous clutter

The detection of static or slowly moving targets in heavy-clutter environments is considered a challenging problem, mainly because it is not possible to discriminate the target from the clutter using the Doppler effect. Polarization diversity provides additional information that enhances the detection of targets, particularly under the conditions described above. Detection performance could be further improved if the polarization of the transmitted signal were optimally selected to match the target polarimetric aspects. In this chapter, we present a polarimetric detector that is robust against heavy inhomogeneous clutter; i.e. the detector false-alarm rate is insensitive to changes in the clutter while still maintaining a good probability of detection. Using real data we test its applicability and show its advantages with respect to other polarimetric detectors. Moreover, the test statistic derived from the detector has a well-known distribution that depends on the transmitted waveform parameters. Finally, we propose the selection of the signal polarization that will maximize the target probability of detection.