AN ENTROPY-BASED CLASSIFICATION SCHEME FOR LAND APPLICATIONS OF POLARIMETRIC SAR

In this paper we outline a new scheme for parameterizing polarimetric scattering problems, which has application in the quantitative analysi s of polarimetric SAR data, The method relies on an eigenvalue analysi s of the coherency matrix and employs a three-level Bernoulli statisti cal model to generate estimates of the average target scattering matri x parameters from the data, The scattering entropy is a key parameter is determining the randomness in this model and is seen as a fundament al parameter in assessing the importance of polarimetry in remote sens ing problems, We show application of the method to some important clas sical random media scattering problems and apply it to POLSAR data fro m the NASA/JPL AIRSAR data base.