Simulated annealing presents an additional way to suppress speckle in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images.This was exemplified by the simulated annealing algorithm for SAR Radar Cross-Section (RCS) estimation developed by R.G.White.However

analysis shows White's algorithm can be refined when it is applied to a SAR single-look image.Taking account of the speciality of the single-look SAR image

this paper proposes another neighborhood model and a new objective function based on the model

and then suggests a novel simulated annealing algorithm.Theoretical analysis and experimental results using simulated and real SAR single-look images show that

the novel algorithm improves structure preservation without degrading the speckle reduction in homogeneous areas.Moreover

it causes less radiometric distortion and shortens time cost with satisfying results.