Characterization of em sea clutter with α-stable distribution

In this contribution, an accurate description of the ocean backscatter from a probability density function is proposed. The Elfouhaily spectrum has been used to generate a realistic sea surface. The scattering field will be computed by using the Physical Optics (PO). The K distribution has been already used to characterize the Radar Cross Section (RCS) of the sea surface. However, the probability density function of the RCS can have heavy tails. Consequently, we use the α-stable distributions which can take care the property of heavy tails. The probability density function is estimated with a least squared method. We finally compare the results obtained with each model by using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test from several random surfaces and a statistical study is made by giving a boxplot of the estimated parameters of the α-stable distribution.