Target averages and decomposition theorems

Several methods for polarimetric target averaging for radar applications are investigated. Attention is given to the example of a random dipole cloud with individual elements considered as input to the target-averaging process. It is possible to eliminate the effect of dipole tilt psi for each individual dipole, which means effectively that each dipole individually is reoriented to a tilt angle psi =0, that is, it is placed in a horizontal position. This process is called desying. It seems clear that desying the data in this way will result in a much stronger characterization for the ´dipole-ness´ of the cloud as a whole. Individual dipoles can also differ in size, leading to a search for a method of desizing individual targets. Various averaging schemes for desying and desizing, or mixtures of these, were tested on a sample of 26 single-target Stokes-matrix data for tree canopy alone and trees with trihedral inserted.<>