A REVIEW OF THE APPLICATIONS OF SAR POLARIMETRY AND POLARIMETRIC INTERFEROMETRY – AN ESA FUNDED STUDY

• Main Author: A Rodrigues
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Sea ice
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.107.5515; http://earth.esa.int/workshops/polinsar2003/papers/01_corr.pdf

This paper presents a literature review conducted under an ESA funded study entitled "Applications of SAR Polarimetry". This study was jointly conducted by QinetiQ, AELc, University of Rennes 1, SarVision and Vexcel UK. The overall study aim was to review, assess and validate the benefits of using polarimetry for land cover classification and sea ice classification. The potential of polarimetric interferometry for vegetation parameter retrieval was also assessed and demonstrated. A literature review on classification techniques for polarised SAR data was undertaken. The objective of this review was to choose the most promising techniques prior to their evaluation for land and sea ice applications. This paper presents the objectives, the key issues, the conclusions and recommendations of the review. 1 STUDY BACKGROUND The objective of this study is to investigate techniques that will support applications of SAR polarimetry in ESA missions in the Earth Watch programme, and also missions in which ESA has a strategic interest such as Terrasar, Radarsat 2 and Alos Palsar. In particular, to investigate techniques for the following application areas: agriculture and land use classification, sea ice monitoring. Additionally, the applications of the new technique that combines SAR polarimetry with SAR interferometry (POLinSAR) are also investigated. The selected application areas are important. The mapping of agricultural crops and land cover has been identified by