Overview of polarimetric interferometry

SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) interferometry has enabled two important science applications: surface change detection and topographic mapping. SAR interferometry is sensitive to the location of the imaged area and the scattering geometry. SAR polarimetry makes use of the polarization dependent scattering response of each pixel within the imaged area. The polarimetric response is highly sensitive to the scattering mechanism of a pixel. S.R. Cloude and K.P. Papathanassiou first published the formulation of polarimetric interferometry that combines both SAR interferometry and SAR polarimetry. The main purpose of using polarimetric interferometry is to extract scattering medium information that may be difficult to obtain from scalar interferometry. Even though the formulation and initial demonstrations appear to be very promising, potential applications of polarimetric interferometry can only be verified by comparing polarimetric interferometry signatures with ground truth data. In this talk, we present the theory and implementation of SAR polarimetric interferometry. Especially, we review SAR polarimetry, SAR interferometry, and SAR polarimetric interferometry in a unified manner. In addition, a new calibration technique suitable for polarimetric interferometry is suggested in this paper