Freeman-Durden Decomposition with Oriented Dihedral Scattering

Abstract

In this paper, when the azimuth direction of polarimetric Synthetic Aperature Radars (SAR) differs from the planting direction of crops, the double bounce of the incident electromagnetic waves from the terrain surface to the growing crops is investigated and compared with the normal double bounce. Oriented dihedral scattering model is developed to explain the investigated double bounce and is introduced into the Freeman-Durden decomposition. The decomposition algorithm corresponding to the improved decomposition is then proposed. The airborne polarimetric SAR data for agricultural land covering two flight tracks are chosen to validate the algorithm; the decomposition results show that for agricultural vegetated land, the improved Freeman-Durden decomposition has the advantage of increasing the decomposition coherency among the polarimetric SAR data along the different flight tracks.

Keywords

• Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)
• Polarization
• Polarimetric target decomposition
• Dihedral scattering