Analysis and comparison of polarization: characteristics for different terrain types

This paper deals with polarization characteristics analysis and comparison for different terrain types. A method for the optimization of the completely polarized component involved in a partially polarized wave is used to extract three basic polarization characteristics parameters, the maximum received power, the optimal polarization states for transmission and reception, and the optimal degree of polarization. We also use an unsupervised classification method to qualitatively analyze the scattering mechanisms of each typical scattering class. We compare these quantities between different ground-cover types by using L-band polarimetric SAR data, and specify the polarization characteristics for each typical terrain type discussed