Interferometric phase and coherence of forest estimated by ESPRIT-based polarimetric SAR interferometry

Polarimetric SAR interferometry has been widely studied for forest observations. The technique utilizes polarization state difference among local scattering centers of the forest to decompose them. Using the method, we can estimate precise forest parameters. We proposed an alternative method based on the ESPRIT algorithm for the estimation. The method can detect as many as 3 local scatterers with fully polarimetric data, and can extract interferometric phase of each local scatterer. In this paper, we verify the availability of the method in 2- and 3-local-scatterer model for forest estimation, and show that forest analysis with 3-local-scatterer improve height estimation accuracy. SIR-C/X-SAR data were used for these verifications. In addition, experimental results of restricted dual-polarization data are also provided to show availability of the method.