Polarimetric SAR image interpretation and target detection with covariance matrix

Abstract

This paper studies the polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image interpretation and target detection. The polarimetric target decomposition theorem and dominant scattering mechanism identification approach have been used widely in polarimetric SAR image interpretation. In order to get a good performance, we present a three-step image interpretation approach which involves speckle reduction and image classification, as pre-processing before the classical interpretation approach. Furthermore, we study the target detection based on the covariance matrix decomposition, and an odd-scattering detector and an even-scattering detector are formed and analyzed. Experimental results are given to verify the effectiveness of the image interpretation approach and to quantify the presented polarimetric detectors.