STATISTICS OF THE STOKES PARAMETERS AND OF THE COMPLEX COHERENCE PARAMETERS IN ONE-LOOK AND MULTILOOK SPECKLE FIELDS

Barakat [1] derived the Stokes parameter statistics, applicable to one -look Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images, of a partially polarized wave backscattered from a Gaussian area. In this paper, the statistics of the Stokes parameters and of the phase difference are derived as a function of the mean effective phase difference and the degree of coh erence for one-look and multilook SAR data. The statistics of the degr ee of coherence are also derived for multilook SAR data. It is shown t hat the estimator currently used for calculation of the degree of cohe rence is biased under low coherence conditions.