Modifying the Yamaguchi Four-Component Decomposition Scattering Powers Using a Stochastic Distance

Model-based decompositions have gained considerable attention after the initial work of Freeman and Durden. This decomposition which assumes the target to be reflection symmetric was later relaxed in the Yamaguchi et al. decomposition with the addition of the helix parameter. Since then many decomposition have been proposed where either the scattering model was modified to fit the data or the coherency matrix representing the second order statistics of the full polarimetric data is rotated to fit the scattering model. In this paper we propose to modify the Yamaguchi four-component decomposition (Y4O) scattering powers using the concept of statistical information theory for matrices. In order to achieve this modification we propose a method to estimate the polarization orientation angle (OA) from full-polarimetric SAR images using the Hellinger distance. In this method, the OA is estimated by maximizing the Hellinger distance between the un-rotated and the rotated $T_{33}$ and the $T_{22}$ components of the coherency matrix $\mathbf{[T]}$. Then, the powers of the Yamaguchi four-component model-based decomposition (Y4O) are modified using the maximum relative stochastic distance between the $T_{33}$ and the $T_{22}$ components of the coherency matrix at the estimated OA. The results show that the overall double-bounce powers over rotated urban areas have significantly improved with the reduction of volume powers. The percentage of pixels with negative powers have also decreased from the Y4O decomposition. The proposed method is both qualitatively and quantitatively compared with the results obtained from the Y4O and the Y4R decompositions for a Radarsat-2 C-band San-Francisco dataset and an UAVSAR L-band Hayward dataset.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE J-STARS (IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing

General model-based decomposition framework for polarimetric SAR images

2017 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.Polarimetric synthetic aperture radars emit a signal and measure the magnitude, phase, and polarization of the return. Polarimetric decompositions are used to extract physically meaningful attributes of the scatterers. Of these, model-based decompositions intend to model the measured data with canonical scatter-types. Many advances have been made to this field of model-based decomposition and this work is surveyed by the first portion of this dissertation. A general model-based decomposition framework (GMBDF) is established that can decompose polarimetric data with different scatter-types and evaluate how well those scatter-types model the data by comparing a residual term. The GMBDF solves for all the scatter-type parameters simultaneously that are within a given decomposition by minimizing the residual term. A decomposition with a lower residual term contains better scatter-type models for the given data. An example is worked through that compares two decompositions with different surface scatter-type models. As an application of the polarimetric decomposition analysis, a novel terrain classification algorithm of polSAR images is proposed. In the algorithm, the results of state-of-the-art polarimetric decompositions are processed for an image. Pixels are then selected to represent different terrain classes. Distributions of the parameters of these selected pixels are determined for each class. Each pixel in the image is given a score according to how well its parameters fit the parameter distributions of each class. Based on this score, the pixel is either assigned to a predefined terrain class or labeled unclassified

Computational polarimetric microwave imaging

We propose a polarimetric microwave imaging technique that exploits recent advances in computational imaging. We utilize a frequency-diverse cavity-backed metasurface, allowing us to demonstrate high-resolution polarimetric imaging using a single transceiver and frequency sweep over the operational microwave bandwidth. The frequency-diverse metasurface imager greatly simplifies the system architecture compared with active arrays and other conventional microwave imaging approaches. We further develop the theoretical framework for computational polarimetric imaging and validate the approach experimentally using a multi-modal leaky cavity. The scalar approximation for the interaction between the radiated waves and the target---often applied in microwave computational imaging schemes---is thus extended to retrieve the susceptibility tensors, and hence providing additional information about the targets. Computational polarimetry has relevance for existing systems in the field that extract polarimetric imagery, and particular for ground observation. A growing number of short-range microwave imaging applications can also notably benefit from computational polarimetry, particularly for imaging objects that are difficult to reconstruct when assuming scalar estimations.Comment: 17 pages, 15 figure

Evaluación de la degradación de la tierra usando la entropía de shannon sobre imágenes polarimétricas en desiertos costeros Patagónicos

En esta investigación se focalizó en la Entropía de Shannon (ES) para la caracterización de imágenes polarimétricas de apertura sintética. Este parámetro analiza la contribución de la información por pixeles individuales para toda la imagen en la evaluación de la degradación de la tierra en imágenes ALOS PALSAR. Escenas de polarización dual y cuádruple fueron adquiridas bajo el proyecto SAOCOM (Satélite Argentino de Observación con Microondas) en 2010 y 2011, del desierto costero noreste patagónico, Argentina. Los mapas fueron verificados con información de alta verosimilitud para la misma área de estudio. Los resultados muestran que la ES puede describir y precisar las características de las imágenes de manera obvia, de tal manera que representa un valor de referencia para la detección de la degradación de la tierra y la extracción de las características de los diferentes estados y transiciones.We focus on Shannon Entropy (SE) for the characterization of polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) images. This approach analyzes the information contribution made by individual pixels to the whole image for assessment of land degradation in the information content of ALOS PALSAR images. Additionally, the performance of other polarization parameters, and polarization decomposition is illustrated and discussed. Dual-Pol and Quad-Pol scenes have been acquired under the SAOCOM (Satélite Argentino de Observación con Microondas, Spanish for Argentine Microwaves Observation Satellite) project in 2010 and 2011, from northeastern Patagonian coastal desert, Argentina. The accuracy of the SE map was assessed using a set of ground observations based on remotely sensed data that have higher accuracy. The results show that the SE can describe and determine the image features more obviously in the study area, so that it represents an important reference value for land degradation detection and land status characteristics extraction .Fil: del Valle, Hector Francisco. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Nacional Patagonico; ArgentinaFil: Hardtke, Leonardo Andrés. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Nacional Patagonico; ArgentinaFil: Blanco, Paula Daniela. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Nacional Patagonico; ArgentinaFil: Sione, Walter Fabian. Universidad Autónoma de Entre Ríos. Fac de Ciencia y Tecnologia. Centro Regional de Geomatica; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Luján; Argentin

Target Decomposition of Quad-Polarimetric SAR Images as an Unmixing Problem

Classic target decomposition methods use scattering space in their approaches. However, the goal for this project is to investigate whether a different approach to retrieve accurate and reliable estimates on the earth composition is possible when using the feature space with covariance matrix-based features. The approach consists of four steps. Generating multidimensional feature space data from sea ice scenes, extracting endmembers, finding the optimal number of endmembers in the scene and finding the contribution for the endmembers to each of the polarimetric feature pixels in the scene. In order to validate the performance of the approach several validation steps where conducted. Classification of the endmembers, calculating the average reconstruction error, classification of the scene and studding the abundance coefficients were some of these steps. Also, generation of synthetic data was conducted as an additional review of the approach. The system in this approach does not take in to account the variability of the polarimetric feature values in the different classes. It also assumes that the pixels are linearly mixed, something they probably not are. As a consequence, the approach is not able to retrieve accurate and reliable estimates on the earth composition for scenes consisting of sea ice. However, the approach gave good results on the synthetic datasets. Further work and investigation on the approach would include adapting the approach to consider the variability all sea ice data suffers from. Further, the methods considering linear mixing should then be replaced with methods considering nonlinear mixing

Application Of Polarimetric SAR For Surface Parameter Inversion And Land Cover Mapping Over Agricultural Areas

In this thesis, novel methodology is developed to extract surface parameters under vegetation cover and to map crop types, from the polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) images over agricultural areas. The extracted surface parameters provide crucial information for monitoring crop growth, nutrient release efficiency, water capacity, and crop production. To estimate surface parameters, it is essential to remove the volume scattering caused by the crop canopy, which makes developing an efficient volume scattering model very critical. In this thesis, a simplified adaptive volume scattering model (SAVSM) is developed to describe the vegetation scattering as crop changes over time through considering the probability density function of the crop orientation. The SAVSM achieved the best performance in fields of wheat, soybean and corn at various growth stages being in convert with the crop phenological development compared with current models that are mostly suitable for forest canopy. To remove the volume scattering component, in this thesis, an adaptive two-component model-based decomposition (ATCD) was developed, in which the surface scattering is a X-Bragg scattering, whereas the volume scattering is the SAVSM. The volumetric soil moisture derived from the ATCD is more consistent with the verifiable ground conditions compared with other model-based decomposition methods with its RMSE improved significantly decreasing from 19 [vol.%] to 7 [vol.%]. However, the estimation by the ATCD is biased when the measured soil moisture is greater than 30 [vol.%]. To overcome this issue, in this thesis, an integrated surface parameter inversion scheme (ISPIS) is proposed, in which a calibrated Integral Equation Model together with the SAVSM is employed. The derived soil moisture and surface roughness are more consistent with verifiable observations with the overall RMSE of 6.12 [vol.%] and 0.48, respectively

Averaged Stokes Vector Based Polarimetric SAR Data Interpretation

In this paper, we propose a new polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data interpretation method based on a locally averaged Stokes vector. We first propose a method to extract discriminators from all three components of the averaged Stokes vector. Based on the extracted discriminators, we build four physical interpretation layers with ascending priorities, i.e., the basic structure layer, the low-coherence targets layer, the man-made targets layer, and the low-backscattering targets layer. An intuitive final image can be generated by simply stacking the four layers in the priority order. We test the performance of the proposed method over Advanced Land Observing Satellite Phased Array type L-band SAR (ALOS-PALSAR) data. Experimental results show that the proposed method has high interpretation performance, particularly for skew-aligned or randomly distributed buildings and isolated man-made targets such as bridges

Studies of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill With the UAVSAR Radar

On 22- 23 June 2010, the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) L band radar imaged the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the effects of oil that was transported within the Gulf of Mexico. We describe the campaign and discuss the unique contributions of the UAVSAR radar to the study of the detection, migration, and impact of oil from the spill. We present an overview of UAVSAR data analyses that support the original science goals of the campaign, namely, (1) algorithm development for oil slick detection and characterization, (2) mapping of oil intrusion into coastal wetlands and intercoastal waterways, and (3) ecosystem impact studies. Our study area focuses on oil-affected wetlands in Barataria Bay, Louisiana. The results indicate that fine resolution, low-noise, L band radar can detect surface oil-on-water with sufficient sensitivity to identify regions in a slick with different types of oil/emulsions and/or oil coverage; identify oil on waters in inland bays and differentiate mixed/weathered oil from fresh oil as it moves into the area; identify areas of potentially impacted wetlands and vegetation in the marshes; and support the crisis response through location of compromised booms and heavily oiled beaches

Statistical comparison of SAR backscatter from icebergs embedded in sea ice and in open water using RADARSAT-2 images of in Newfoundland waters and the Davis Strait

Icebergs are considered a threat to marine operations. Satellite monitoring of icebergs is one option to aid in the development of iceberg hazard maps. Satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is an obvious choice because of its relative weather independence, day and night operation. Nonetheless, the detection of icebergs in SAR can be a challenge, particularly with high iceberg areal density, heterogeneous background clutter and the presence of sea ice. This thesis investigates and compares polarimetric signatures of icebergs embedded in sea ice and icebergs in open water. In this thesis, RADARSAT-2 images have been used for analysis, which was acquired over locations near the coastline (approximately 3-35 km) of the islands of Newfoundland and Greenland. All icebergs considered here are in the lower incident angle range (below 30 degrees) of the SAR acquisition geometry. For analysis, polarimetry parameters such as co- (HH) and cross- (HV) polarization and several decomposition techniques, specifically Pauli, Freeman-Durden, Yamaguchi, Cloud-Pottier and van Zyl classification, have been used to determine the polarimetric signatures of icebergs and sea ice. Statistical hypothesis tests were used to determine the differences among backscatters from different icebergs. Statistical results tend to show a dominant surface scattering mechanism for icebergs. Moreover, icebergs in open water produce larger volume scatter than icebergs in sea ice, while icebergs in sea ice produce larger surface scatter than icebergs in open water. In addition, there appear to be minor observable differences between icebergs in Greenland and icebergs in Newfoundland