POLARIMETRIC MODELING AND PARAMETER-ESTIMATION WITH APPLICATIONS TO REMOTE-SENSING

We develop and analyze two parametric models in which electromagnetic plane waves carrying polarimetric information are received. The first model considers estimation of the polarimetric response of a surface b y measuring the reflections of actively generated waves, The second co nsiders estimation of the polarization of passively generated waves, B oth models have applications to remote sensing, We propose a natural p arametrization of the distribution of the received signal, Using the C ramer-Rao bound, we characterize the best possible accuracy of unbiase d estimators of these parameters, Simple estimators are given. Both mo dels are fitted into a common framework and compared.