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

ABSTRACT

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.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Prof. Dr-Ing. Alberto Moraira of DLR, Germany, for providing the full polarimetric E-SAR data set from the EU project AMPER for use in the study. This research is supported by the Thailand Research Fund: [Grant Number TRG5780216] and the Chulachomklao Royal Military Academy’s (CRMA’s) Development Fund.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Thailand Research Fund: [Grant Number TRG5780216] and the Chulachomklao Royal Military Academy’s (CRMA’s) Development Fund.