Non-Gaussian signal statistics in ocean SAR imagery

The authors have studied the significance of non-Gaussian signal statistics in some synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images of the ocean surface. The study consisted of calculating the amplitude histogram of the returned echoes from the images and comparing these with the Rayleigh- and Kν-distributions, corresponding to the Gaussian and non-Gaussian statistics, respectively. The images used were some C-band SAR data from the Canadian airborne SAR collected during the NORCSEX'88 campaign and some ERS-1 data collected during the NORCSEX'91 campaign. The analysis of the NORCSEX'88 data included studies of the dependency of the signal statistics on incidence angle and meteorological and imaging conditions. It was found, specifically at small incidence angles, that there was a significant deviation from Gaussian statistics. It was also found that when the wind was blowing against the waves, the deviation from Gaussian statistics was more pronounced than when the wind was blowing in the same direction as the waves were propagating. The study also showed a correlation between the signal statistics and the width of the SAR image spectra. At low incidence angles, this agrees with the interpretation that non-Gaussian statistics may be related to strong widebanded scattering events. However, since non-Gaussian statistics also were observed at incidence angles as high as 50°, it is evident that the modulation of the scattering cross section by the long waves is also an important factor. In addition, the analysis of the ERS-1 data showed that to account for the width of the SAR image spectra, an azimuth smearing term, due to short scene coherence time, had to be included. This was in the present work done by modeling the short-coherence-time-smearing as a Gaussian low-pass filter. By this procedure, the authors were able to obtain realistic estimates for the average scene coherence time of the SAR scenes