Orientation angle estimation from PolSAR data using a stochastic distance

The angle of rotation (θ) of any object about the line of sight (LOS) is known as the polarization orientation angle (OA). The OA is found to be non-zero for undulating terrains and man-made targets oriented away from the radar LOS. This effect is more pronounced at lower frequencies (eg. L- and P-bands). The OA shift is not only induced by azimuthal slope but also by range slope. The OA shift increases the cross-polarization (HV) intensity and subsequently the co-variance or the coherency matrix becomes reflection asymmetric. Compensating this OA prior to any model-based decomposition technique for geophysical parameter estimation or classification is crucial. In this paper a new method has been proposed for OA estimation based on a stochastic distance. The OA is estimated by maximizing the Hellinger distance between the un-rotated and rotated diagonal elements of the coherency matrix.