Joint spatial-polarimetric whitening filter to improve SAR target detection performance for spatially distributed targets

A new SAR target detection technique is developed which we call the joint spatial-polarimetric whitening filter (SPWF) detector. This SPWF detector is an extension of Novak's polarimetric whitening filter (PWF) detector. The derivation of the new SPWF detector presented here is motivated by a new derivation of the PWF developed by Wang and Lee. The SPWF detector is shown to perform better than the PWF detector and single channel detectors using real millimeter-wave fully polarimetric 1 ft x 1 ft spatial resolution SAR data.