P-band polarimetric SAR tomography for tropical forest structure characterization

Forest vertical structure retrieval is recognized as a challenging task on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) applications. At P-band, SAR tomography is an efficient tool for backscattered power vertical distribution retrieval. However, the estimation the estimated backscattered power vertical distribution is not accurate enough to characterize vegetation structure. Vegetation structure may be retrieved using Polarimetric SAR Tomography (PolTomSAR) with an alternative modeling of forest, like Random-Volume-over-Ground (RVoG) model. The aim of this paper is the demonstration of the efficiency of RVoG model in forest vertical structure retrieval. The proposed techniques are applied to P-Band PolTomSAR data acquired during the TropiSAR campaign over the test site of Paracou in French Guiana.