Talk:K-distribution

Article too specific to SAR
At present the article, although informative, is very specific to radar applications. It should be made explicit that the content so far refers to the intensity domain only. Redding remains a useful source for radar, but is rather dated in my opinion. Ultimately it would be beneficial to include the parameterisations for the amplitude domain which have been used in sonar (noting that these are single-look systems). It would be nice to refer to the work of Abraham and Lyons, in terms of their physical interpretation of the model and the various MME based estimators they have derived. The IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering had a special issue on noise estimation in 2010 which is particularly relevant. 213.105.26.59 (talk) 19:58, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It may be better to have an entirely separate article discussing different forms of modelling and applications in radar and sonar, leaving this to be a mainly mathematical article about a particular probability distribution. Such a new article could then be given a much more meaningful title than the one here. Melcombe (talk) 09:30, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Clarifications needed
While the formula essentially agrees with the formula given i the book "Sea Clutter Scattering, the K distribution and radar performance" 2nd ed by Ward Tough and Watts (WWT) from there description it seems as if alpha rather than beta should be set to 1. This part is described as a speckle component while the other part (beta and mu) is described as the modulation of what is here sigma by a gamma PDF. Setting alpha=1 also makes b=beta/mu a true rate parameter, not a ratio between parameters from the two different gamma functions! Setting the rate parameter (alpha or beta) makes that gamma distribution an exponential distribution suggesting that the K-distribution (i this form) describes a power signal ("square law detector") rather than a (non-complex) amplitude signal ("linear detector"), in which case a(n amplitude) Rayleigh distribution. At least for radar and related electronic purposes it is important to make a distinction between these two cases.150.227.15.253 (talk) 22:27, 15 December 2022 (UTC)