ENVISAT ASAR for land cover information

In 2002 ENVISAT with the advanced SAR (ASAR) as one important instrument was launched. As compared to the preceding SARs on ERS-1 and ERS-2 the ASAR has additional functionality with many different modes. Important aspects of the ASAR include the alternating polarization modes for quasi simultaneous acquisition of data at two different polarizations, and beam-steering capability, which permits to acquire data at different incidence angles. In this paper the use of the ENVISAT ASAR for land cover information retrieval is discussed. For multi-incidence angle data a coefficient to characterize the incidence angle dependence is proposed.