A generalized Gaussian extension to the Rician distribution for SAR image modeling

We present a novel statistical model, the generalized-Gaussian-Rician (GG-Rician) distribution, for the characterization of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. Since accurate statistical models lead to better results in applications such as target tracking, classification, or despeckling, characterizing SAR images of various scenes including urban, sea surface, or agricultural is essential. The proposed statistical model is based on the Rician distribution to model the amplitude of a complex SAR signal, the in-phase and quadrature components of which are assumed to be generalized-Gaussian (GG) distributed. The proposed amplitude GG-Rician model is further extended to cover the intensity of SAR signals. In the experimental analysis, the GG-Rician model is investigated for amplitude and intensity SAR images of various frequency bands and scenes in comparison to state-of-the-art statistical models that include Weibull, G⁰, Generalized gamma, and the lognormal distribution. The statistical significance analysis and goodness-of-fit test results demonstrate the superior performance and flexibility of the proposed model for all frequency bands and scenes, and its applicability on both amplitude and intensity SAR images.