ITERATIVE MULTISTAGE MODEL-BASED DECOMPOSITION FOR POLARIMETRIC SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR IMAGERY

Abstract

This paper re-examines our previously proposed multistage four-component polarimetric decomposition for reducing negative power pixels, where the performance evaluation was conducted by using ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 fully polarimetric data. The negative power pixels over vegetated areas were significantly reduced. The remaining negative power pixels distributed primarily over man-made objects and sea. For further reduction, an iterative multistage polarimetric decomposition, which employs two roll-invariant volume scattering models, was subsequently developed. The derived physical scattering mechanisms of different land cover types were analysed and are reported in this paper.