Statistical analysis of backscatter coefficients in ERS-1 SAR images: Analysis of homogeneous sea areas near the coast of Greenland

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 1999 in the subject Geography / Earth Science - Cartography, Geographic Information Science and Geodesy, grade: 1.0, University of Copenhagen (Geophysical Department), language: English, abstract: The primary objectives of this thesis are 1) to find and theoretically discuss the relevant statistical distributions for backscatter coefficients (intensities) in SAR images, 2) to develop and examine methods which can be applied for a statistical analysis of intensities in SAR images over homogeneous open sea areas - an analysis which hopefully can be used to detect departures from homogeneity, 3) to use these methods for an examination of the statistical behaviour of the intensities in SAR images. Objective 2) is subdivided into two parts: 2a) development of parameter estimation methods for statistical distributions, 2b) examination of different types of statistical test methods. It will be demonstrated that the three parameter generalized gamma distribution describes the statistical distribution of intensities in homogeneous sea areas as well as the K-distribution, and that the parameters in the generalized gamma distribution are easier and more robust to estimate than the parameters in the K-distribution. Therefore, the generalized gamma distribution is recommended to model a homogeneous sea surface, for instance it the target is to detect ships or icebergs in a SAR image.