Improved scattering-model-based speckle filter in polarimetric SAR data with orientation angle compensation

Speckle filtering of polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (POLSAR) is more complicated than a single polarization SAR, because it needs preserve the characteristics of amplitude of each polarization channel and of the relative phase differences among the channels. Fortunately, J.S.Lee et al. have published a scattering-model-based speckle filter (SMBF) in 2006, that filter has good performance for speckle reduction and preserving the characteristics of POLSAR data. However, the Freeman-Durden decomposition, an important procedure of SMBF, is based on the reflection symmetry assumption and not rotation-invariance. In this paper, an improvement of SMBF is proposed for polarimetric SAR data with orientation angle compensation.