Dual Polarimetric Sar Signature For Human-Made Target Characterization

This study demonstrates the variation of the received wave polarization signatures for enhanced characterization of diverse land cover targets using dual-polarized Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data. The VV-VH and HH-HV dual-polarized data extracted from full polarimetric C-band RADARSAT-2 data over San Francisco Bay area are utilized for this purpose. It is shown that the received wave polarization signature, which represents the explicit variation of received power with a fixed transmit polarization and varying received polarization, allows enhanced discrimination among several canonical, natural and human-made targets. Furthermore, utilizing the received power extrema, a ratio parameter (?) is proposed that has high sensitivity with morphological aspects of diverse targets. Therefore, the Dual Polarimetric Signature (DPS) and ? show great potential for target char-acterization and classification. Furthermore, the proposed concept can significantly benefit the operational Sentinel-1 and the forthcoming NISAR mission.