ITEMS

modern scholarly publishers in the finest tradition

Journals

	Search

Telecommunications and Radio Engineering

ISSN for PRINT: 0040-2508

Institutional price:	$4518.00
Issues per year:	20

Best Paper Award Selection - Editorial Board Site

2002, Volume58

160 pages

Issue price - $394.00

Automatic Robust Procedure for Radar Image Preliminary Analysis and Filtering

V. V. Lukin
Department of Transmitters, Receivers and Signal Processing, National Aerospace University, Chkalova Str. 17, 61070 Kharkiv, Ukraine

N. N. Ponomarenko
Department of Transmitters, Receivers and Signal Processing, National Aerospace University, Chkalova Str. 17, 61070 Kharkiv, Ukraine

S. K. Abramov
Department of Transmitters, Receivers and Signal Processing, National Aerospace University, Chkalova Str. 17, 61070 Kharkiv, Ukraine

A. A. Zelensky
A. Usikov Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 12, Academician Proskura St., Kharkov; and National Aerospace University (Kharkov Aviation Institute), 17, Chkalov St.., Kharkov, Ukraine

Karen O. Egiazarian
Tampere University of Technology, Signal Processing Laboratory, P. O. Box 553, FIN-33101, Tampere, Finland

J. T. Astola
Tampere University of Technology, Signal Processing Laboratory, P. O. Box 553, FIN-33101, Tampere, Finland

ABSTRACT

Quite typical is a situation when it is desirable to process some radar images for which their origin and/or imaging system parameters (operation mode) are unknown and, thus, a priori information about noise characteristics is limited. Then, evaluating these characteristics, for example, estimating multiplicative noise variance is a complicated and time consuming task that commonly requires high skill of the user. To perform both tasks efficiently an automatic robust procedure for SAR and SLAR image preliminary analysis and filtering is proposed and considered. The basic stages of this procedure are the following: a) blind evaluation of multiplicative noise relative variance for the original radar image, b) its pre-processing using the local statistic Lee filter, c) blind evaluation of the residual noise relative variance for the obtained pre-processed image, d) post-filtering. The proposed procedure provides appropriately accurate estimations of noise characteristics. The influence of variance estimation errors on filter performance is analyzed. The effectiveness of the analysis/filtering procedure is confirmed quantitatively for simulated images and demonstrated for real life radar images.