Three‐component decomposition technique for hybrid‐pol SAR data

Abstract

This study describes a three-component decomposition of Stokes vector representing the hybrid-polarimetry (hybrid-pol) data. The three components are single-bounce, double-bounce and volume scattering. At the outset, the received backscattered wave is decomposed into completely polarised (CP) and completely depolarised (CD) parts based on Born and Wolf's wave dichotomy theorem. Then, the CP part is further decomposed into three independent components which indicate the contribution of three basic scattering mechanisms. In the proposed method, the CD part is considered as random noise and no physical meaning is attached to it. Whereas in existing hybrid-pol decomposition techniques such as m − δ and m − α, this component has been considered as volume scattering. This results in volume scattering being overestimated by these techniques. The authors demonstrated that the performance of the proposed decomposition technique is better than these existing decomposition techniques.