A Scattering Center Model for SAR Imagery∗

We present a high frequency model for scattering present in SAR imagery. The model retains dominant terms of the electromagnetic scattering response of canonical scattering objects using solutions from both Physical Optics and the Geometric Theory of Diffraction. Both frequency and aspect dependence of scattering centers are modeled. It is applicable to single polarization as well as multiple polarization data, and it provides an effective, physics-based description of complex SAR imagery. The model parameters provide a concise, physically relevant description of a complex object and are thus good candidates for use in target recognition, radar data compression, and scattering phenomenology studies. Algorithms for estimating the parameters from measured SAR imagery are presented, and the problem of model structure selection is addressed.