Synthetic aperture radar detection and clutter rejection minace filters

New shift-invariant distortion-invariant Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) filters for detection are described. They employ new modified Minimum Noise and Correlation Energy (MINACE) filters. Test results are provided for real SAR data with 360° aspect views of two different objects and for 100 real SAR clutter chips (natural and man-made) that passed the second stage of the Lincoln Laboratory's SAR processor. We obtained high detection rates PD=100% and few false alarms PFA ≤ 0.82% using only three filters per object class. The shift-invariance of the filters allow their use as adjuncts for all stages (detection, discrimination, classification) of a SAR image processor. Classification results are also briefly reported. Copyright © 1996 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.