Site-specific land clutter modelling based on radar remote sensing images and digital terrain data

This paper extends the range of radar remote sensing applications by considering the application of remote sensing radar images for site-specific land clutter modelling. Data fusion plays a central role in our approach, and enables effective combination of remote sensing radar measurements with incomplete information about the Earth's surface provided by optical sensors and digital terrain maps. The approach uses airborne remote sensing radar measurements to predict clutter intensity for different terrain coordinates and utilises an empirical backscattering model to interpolate radar measurements to grazing angles employed by land-based radar sensor. The practical aspects of the methodology application for real-life remote sensing data and generation of a land clutter map of the test site at X-band are discussed.

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