Improvement of adaptive-model based decomposition with polarization orientation compensation

Polarimetric SAR decomposition has been used extensively because of its capability to identify the strength of each scattering mechanism from polarimetric SAR data. To achieve higher accuracy, one should take into account not only variation of vegetated terrain but also topography under vegetation. In this paper, we firstly isolate vegetation orientation angle from generalized volume scattering component, and then modify a conventional adaptive model-based decomposition by carefully introducing a concept of topographic polarization orientation compensation (TPOC). Finally, experimental validation is conducted by using P-band AIRSAR image of Black Forest in Germany.