eprintid: 10069541 rev_number: 16 eprint_status: archive userid: 608 dir: disk0/10/06/95/41 datestamp: 2019-03-05 15:29:55 lastmod: 2021-11-16 00:43:17 status_changed: 2019-03-05 15:29:55 type: article metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Angelliaume, S creators_name: Rosenberg, L creators_name: Ritchie, M title: Modeling the amplitude distribution of radar sea clutter ispublished: pub divisions: UCL divisions: B04 divisions: C05 divisions: F46 note: Copyright © 2019 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0). abstract: Ship detection in the maritime domain is best performed with radar due to its ability to surveil wide areas and operate in almost any weather condition or time of day. Many common detection schemes require an accurate model of the amplitude distribution of radar echoes backscattered by the ocean surface. This paper presents a review of select amplitude distributions from the literature and their ability to represent data from several different radar systems operating from 1 GHz to 10 GHz. These include the K distribution, arguably the most popular model from the literature as well as the Pareto, K+Rayleigh, and the trimodal discrete (3MD) distributions. The models are evaluated with radar data collected from a ground-based bistatic radar system and two experimental airborne radars. These data sets cover a wide range of frequencies (L-, S-, and X-band), and different collection geometries and sea conditions. To guide the selection of the most appropriate model, two goodness of fit metrics are used, the Bhattacharyya distance which measures the overall distribution error and the threshold error which quantifies mismatch in the distribution tail. Together, they allow a quantitative evaluation of each distribution to accurately model radar sea clutter for the purpose of radar ship detection. date: 2019-02-01 date_type: published official_url: http://doi.org/10.3390/rs11030319 oa_status: green full_text_type: pub language: eng primo: open primo_central: open_green verified: verified_manual elements_id: 1633874 doi: 10.3390/rs11030319 lyricists_name: Ritchie, Matthew lyricists_id: MARIT18 actors_name: Flynn, Bernadette actors_id: BFFLY94 actors_role: owner full_text_status: public publication: Remote Sensing volume: 11 number: 3 article_number: 319 issn: 2072-4292 citation: Angelliaume, S; Rosenberg, L; Ritchie, M; (2019) Modeling the amplitude distribution of radar sea clutter. Remote Sensing , 11 (3) , Article 319. 10.3390/rs11030319 <https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11030319>. Green open access document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10069541/1/remotesensing-11-00319.pdf