Spatial phase correlation in high resolution SAR images

Abstract:
SAR images are complex images (i.e. described by amplitude and phase). Due to the coherent nature of the SAR signal, phase is determinist but not predictable. As a consequence, the phase image is hard to process on its own. Goodman hypothesis states that the phase is uniformly distributed (fully developed speckle). This model tends to fail at high resolution on some man-made structures. A major reason is that the rate between resolution and wavelength gets smaller. Thus, standard statistical phase models are not valid anymore on the entire image and spatial phase correlation phenomena can appear locally. The aim of this paper is to detect such correlation patterns and to understand their physical meaning.