Target Detection and Characterization using H/alpha Decomposition and Polarimetric Signatures

Recently, the characterization and classification of terrain-cover using polarimetric SAR data has been extensively investigated and reported on (J.S.Lee, 1994). In this paper we re-examine the entropy-alpha approach (J.S.Lee, 1999) to radar polarimetry and show how the basic method may be augmented by the addition of the polarimetric signature parameters (F.T. Ulaby and C. Elachi, 1990), the propagation and helicity phase angles and the backscattering cross section. The method has been tested using the full polarimetric airborne data sets acquired with DLR´s experiment SAR (E-SAR). The test region is the area of Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany acquired in the P-band. The results agree with the accepted understanding of radar backscatter and show that the use of the polarimetric signatures deliver complementary information to the entropy/alpha decomposition