POLARIMETRIC SAR INTERFEROMETRY

In this paper, we examine the role of polarimetry in synthetic apertur e radar (SAR) interferometry, We first propose a general formulation f or vector wale interferometry that includes conventional scalar interf erometry as a special case. Then, we show how polarimetric basis trans formations can be introduced into SAR interferometry and applied to fo rm interferograms between all possible linear combinations of polariza tion states. This allows us to reveal the strong polarization dependen cy of the interferometric coherence. We then solve the coherence optim ization problem involving maximization of interferometric coherence an d formulate a new coherent decomposition for polarimetric SAR interfer ometry that allows the separation of the effective phase centers of di fferent scattering mechanisms. A simplified stochastic scattering mode l for an elevated forest canopy is introduced to demonstrate the effec tiveness of the proposed algorithms. In this way, we demonstrate the i mportance of wave polarization for the physical interpretation of SAR interferograms. We investigate the potential of polarimetric SAR inter ferometry using results from the evaluation of fully polarimetric inte rferometric shuttle imaging radar (SIR)-C/X-SAR data collected during October 8-9, 1994, over the SE Baikal Lake Selenga delta region of Bur iatia, Southeast Siberia, Russia.