Polarization diversity detection of distributed targets in compound-gaussian clutter

We deal with the problem of polarimetric detection of distributed targets in compound-Gaussian clutter with unknown covariance matrix. Since no uniformly most powerful (UMP) detector exists for the problem at hand, we devise and assess two classes of suboptimum receivers. The former contains two detectors, designed according to the Wald and the generalized likelihood ratio tests, which resort to secondary data, free of signal components and with the same covariance structure of the cells under test, for estimating the clutter spectral properties. The latter contains a detector which achieves adaptivity without exploiting the training set. All the decision rules ensure the constant false alarm rate (CFAR) property with respect to the texture statistics but they are not theoretically CFAR with respect to the disturbance covariance matrix. Finally, we present simulation results, based also on real clutter data, showing that the Wald test receiver achieves in general a better detection performance and a stronger robustness than its counterparts