Improvement in Bistatic SAR coherence through spatially variant polarimetry

Abstract:
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Coherent Change Detection (CCD) and interferometry depend on high coher-ence between pairs of SAR images. In principle these approaches allow a sensitive change detection for example of vehicle tracks or due to ground subsidence, both applications having important civilian and military benefits. This work investigates bistatic SAR coherence, and in particular a polarimetric technique to improve bistatic SAR image coherence. It is shown that in the general bistatic SAR-near-field scenario, for example with a fixed ground-based receiver, coherence between the two bistatic SAR images will be improved with a spatially variant polarization decomposition.