Characterization of Radar Targets – a Review of Polarimetric Descriptors Applied to Recent F-SAR Data

Abstract:
High-resolution polarimetric SAR data make it possible to characterize and identify scatterers of limited physical extent. Thus, by polarimetric techniques, the physical properties of an object or a scattering volume can be described in terms of target characteristic parameters and features on a pixel-by-pixel basis. Over the last fifty years, numerous ways of handling and interpreting polarimetric target descriptors have been proposed and developed. In this paper, a review of some of these methods and algorithms will be presented, and examples based on recently acquired data by the F-SAR system of DLR will be shown.