Quad polarimetric synthetic aperture radar analysis of icebergs in Greenland and Svalbard

• Main Author: Bailey, Johnson
• Other Authors: Marino, Armando, Akbari, Vahid, Spyrakos, Evangelos
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: University of Stirling 2022
• Subjects: SAR; synthetic aperture radar; radar; polarimetry; icebergs; backscattering; remote sensing; earth observation; PolSAR; polar; Arctic; Greenland; Svalbard; Iceberg*
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1893/34905; http://dspace.stir.ac.uk/bitstream/1893/34905/1/Quad%20Polarimetric%20Synthetic%20Aperture%20Radar%20Analysis%20of%20Icebergs%20in%20Greenland%20and%20Svalbard%20final_version.pdf

Polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) has been widely used in ocean and cryospheric applications. This is because, PolSAR can be used in all-day operations and in areas of cloud cover, and therefore can provide valuable large-scale monitoring in polar regions, which is very helpful to shipping and offshore maritime operations. In the last decades, attention has turned to the potential of PolSAR to detect icebergs in the Arctic since they are a major hazard to vessels. However, there is a substantial lack of literature exploring the potentialities of PolSAR and the understanding of iceberg scattering mechanisms. Additionally, it is not known if high resolution PolSAR can be used to detect icebergs smaller than 120 metres. This thesis aims to improve the knowledge of the use of PolSAR scattering mechanisms of icebergs, and detection of small icebergs. First, an introduction to PolSAR is outlined in chapter two, and monitoring of icebergs is presented in chapter three. The first data chapter (Chapter 4) is focused on developing a multi-scale analysis of icebergs using parameters from the Cloude-Pottier and the Yamaguchi decompositions, the polarimetric span and the Pauli scattering vector. This method is carried out using ALOS-2 PALSAR quad polarimetric L-band SAR on icebergs in Greenland. This approach outlines the good potential for using PolSAR for future iceberg classification. One of the main important outcomes is that icebergs are composed by a combination of single targets, which therefore may require a more complex way of processing SAR data to properly extract physical information. In chapter five, the problem of detecting icebergs is addressed by introducing six state-of-the-art detectors previously applied to vessel monitoring. These detectors are the Dual Intensity Polarisation Ratio Anomaly Detector (iDPolRAD), Polarimetric Notch Filter (PNF), Polarimetric Matched Filter (PMF), reflection symmetry (sym), Optimal Polarimetric Detector (OPD) and the Polarimetric Whitening Filter (PWF). ...