Multi-Chromatic Analysis Polarimetric Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (MCA-PolInSAR) for Urban Classification

Inhalt:
One of the problems of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) polarimetric decomposition, is that oriented urban areas and vegetation signatures are decomposed into the same volume scattering mechanism. Such indetermination makes it difficult to distinguish vegetation from oblique urban areas with respect to the radar illumination direction within the volume scattering mechanism. This phenomenon occurs because oriented targets exhibit similar polarimetric responses. This paper presents an improvement of the full-polarimetric SAR decomposition scheme in order to perform more accurate classification. The method uses Doppler sub-aperture Multi Chromatic Analysis (MCA), in order to separate oriented buildings from vegetation, permitting more accurate classification. In this paper, a new multi-chromatic, full polarimetric classification scheme has been implemented. This method yields considerably improved results in which oriented urban areas are recognized, from volume scattering, as double-bounce objects. Results also show a considerable improvement in robustness of classification, in terms of definition and precision.