A Polarimetric Decomposition Method for Ice in the Bohai Sea Using C-Band PolSAR Data

In recent years, there has been an increased interest in using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to detect and monitor sea ice in the Bohai Sea for protecting offshore exploration and supporting marine transport. Two important tasks are the classification of sea ice and the determination of sea ice thickness, which can be achieved by considering the specific scattering mechanisms of the different ice types. This paper describes a three-component scattering model to decompose polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) data of sea ice. The total backscatter is modeled as the incoherent summation of surface, double-bounce, volume, and residual components. The proposed model extends the volume scattering contribution of sea ice by considering transmission, extinction, and refraction effects. The model is validated using C-band Radarsat-2 quad-polarization data acquired over sea ice in the Bohai Sea. The results show that the proposed polarimetric decomposition approach helps to distinguish different ice types and offers a proxy for sea ice thickness.