Using shaped phase-thresholds for detecting moving targets in multiple-channel SAR

The authors have developed a technique for detecting moving surface targets in a single frame of short-duration multi-channel SAR image using phase interferometry. For a pixel to be associated with a moving target, we require it to exceed both a magnitude threshold in the SAR image and a phase threshold in the corresponding interferometric phase image. Here we show that a magnitude-dependent interferometric phase threshold, i.e., a shaped phase threshold, is a better choice than a constant phase threshold. In addition, we show that the interferometric phase reference plane needed for checking deviations, when computed from the geometry alone, provides superior detection performance over an interferometric phase plane estimated from the data. In this paper, we present results using airborne SAR data.