Abstract
Circularly polarized synthetic aperture radar (CP-SAR) is known to be insensitive to polarization mismatch losses caused by the Faraday rotation effect and antenna misalignment. Additionally, the dual-circular polarimetric (DCP) mode has proven to have more polarimetric information than that of the corresponding mode of linear polarization, i.e., the dual-linear polarimetric (DLP) mode. Owing to these benefits, this paper investigates the feasibility of CP-SAR for rice monitoring. A ground-based CP-radar system was exploited, and C-band anechoic chamber data of a self-cultivated Japanese rice paddy were acquired from germination to ripening stages. Temporal variations of polarimetric observables derived from full-circular polarimetric (FCP) and DCP as well as synthetically generated DLP data are analyzed and assessed with regard to their effectiveness in phenology retrieval. Among different observations, the H / α ¯ plane and triangle plots obtained by three scattering components (surface, double-bounce, and volume scattering) for both the FCP and DCP modes are confirmed to have reasonable capability in discriminating the relevant intervals of rice growth.
Highlights
Conventional polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) that adopts linearly polarized (LP)antennas on the transmitter and receiver, aptly named as LP-SAR, has already proven its powerful classification ability
Due to the growing interest in the use of circular polarization, we investigate, in this paper, the feasibility of the full-circular polarimetric (FCP) and dual-circular polarimetric (DCP) modes of Circularly polarized synthetic aperture radar (CP-SAR) and its performance on rice phenology monitoring
Since compact polarimetric SAR systems have been gaining increasing attention, the aim of this study is to assess the performance of the DCP mode by comparing its information content with that of the FCP mode in the case of rice backscattering
Summary
Conventional polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) that adopts linearly polarized (LP)antennas on the transmitter and receiver, aptly named as LP-SAR, has already proven its powerful classification ability. The FLP mode provides complete polarimetric information which enhances the target parameter retrieval and polarimetric discrimination. Inherent limitations such as reduction of swath width, an increase of system complexity, data rate, and power consumption will be compromised. DLP systems, on the other hand, overcome these limiting factors but they do not afford complete information regarding the full polarization state of the targets. It results in a less accurate alpha angle parameter [1,2] and does not give the possibility to perform three-component
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