Application of angular correlation function of clutter scattering and correlation imaging in target detection

The authors study a correlation imaging method for the detection of targets embedded in clutter environment. The result is based on Monte Carlo simulations. In the simulations, the targets are embedded in a medium consisting of randomly distributed small scatterers and the scattered fields are calculated. The scattered fields are then used for image processing. The incident and scattered directions are chosen to avoid the “memory effect” of clutter scattering. It has been shown that the correlation function of scattered fields due to clutter is small if the memory effect is avoided. The correlation imaging is to calculate the correlation function with focusing on desired locations, Therefore, it can suppress clutter and have finer resolution. The angular correlation (ACF) imaging is used for circular synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and frequency angular correlation (FACF) imaging is used for linear SAR. Numerical results show improvement over the conventional field imaging