A novel interpretation of the PolSAR coherency matrix data

Abstract

Cloude-Pottier incoherent target decomposition (ICTD) and Touzi ICTD has been widely applied as a popular approach to interpret the scattering characteristics of a target in polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) data processing. However, they have a common drawback, i.e. proliferation of parameters (PoP) is unavoidable. Paladini et al. solved this problem by developing an orientation-invariant ICTD based on the coherency matrix under circular polarization basis. As an alternative to Paladini decomposition, we proposed a novel ICTD based on the frequently used coherency matrix under linear polarization basis. The proposed method can also avoid the problem of PoP, and avoid the ambiguity of alpha angle of Paladini decomposition as well. Real PolSAR data is processed to validate the proposed decomposition.