Improving SAR data processing with polarimetric reference functions in the range Doppler algorithm

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is a form of radar that can be used to create images of objects and landscapes. The main important application of the polarimetric SAR can be found in surface and target decomposition process of its image processing. In this article, we propose a method of polarimetric...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational journal of remote sensing Vol. 38; no. 23; pp. 6582 - 6598
Main Authors Phruksahiran, Narathep, Michanan, Junya, Petchatree, Somrak, Chandra, Madhukar
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London Taylor & Francis 02.12.2017
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Azimuth
Backscattering
Compression
Data
Data analysis
Data compression
Data processing
Decomposition
Doppler sonar
Image classification
Image processing
Landscape
Mathematical models
Radar
Radar imaging
Radar polarimetry
Reflectors
SAR (radar)
Synthetic aperture radar
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Summary:Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is a form of radar that can be used to create images of objects and landscapes. The main important application of the polarimetric SAR can be found in surface and target decomposition process of its image processing. In this article, we propose a method of polarimetric SAR data processing using two new polarimetric reference functions of canonical targets with the intention to apply in coherent decompositions. Our experiment uses polarimetric backscatter characteristics of the dihedral and trihedral reflectors as the targets under a ground-based SAR geometry to create the polarimetric reference functions for azimuth compression in the SAR data processing. We process the data using Pauli decomposition to investigate the effect of our functions on the RGB (red, green, and blue) properties of the processed images. The results show that Pauli decomposition using our functions produces images with different distribution and intensity of RGB colours in the image pixels with some signs of improvement over the traditional range Doppler algorithm. This demonstrates that our polarimetric reference function can be used in the decomposition steps of the traditional SAR data processing and can potentially be used to reveal some useful quantitative physical information of target points of interest and improve image and surface classification.
ISSN:0143-1161
1366-5901
DOI:10.1080/01431161.2017.1362126