All season assessment of RADARSAT Constellation Mission compact polarimetry modes for canadian ICE service operational implementation

The RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM) will have the capability of acquiring all of its beam modes in a compact polarimetry (CP) configuration. The RCM SAR will transmit circular polarization and receive two orthogonal mutually coherent linear polarizations at swath widths large enough for operational sea ice monitoring. CP parameters are synthesized from RADARSAT-2 quad-polarized data, to emulate three RCM modes at different resolutions and noise floors. From an initial set of 26 CP parameters and 5 standard parameters, the most promising parameters for sea ice type and open water discrimination are identified for each ice season, using two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov testing. The most promising parameters are further analyzed to assess their suitability for automated classification while qualitative analysis is also performed to assess the interpretive improvement of CP parameters over standard co- and cross-polarized imagery.