Polarimetric calibration of spaceborne and airborne multifrequency SAR data for scattering-based characterization of manmade and natural features

The Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) systems use electromagnetic radiations of different polarizations in the microwave frequency to collect scattering information from targets on Earth. Nevertheless, as with any other electronic device, PolSAR are also not ideal and subjected distortions. most important these distortions polarimetric caused due channel imbalance, phase bias, crosstalk between polarization channels. For spaceborne systems, Earth’s ionosphere contributes an additional distortion known Faraday rotation. An effort was made this study perform calibration Quad-pol Compact-pol datasets acquired using airborne estimate minimize investigation done analyze impact mechanisms ground its dependency radar wavelength. UAVSAR L-band dataset, RADARSAT-2 ALOS-2 PALSAR-2, ISRO's L&S- Band Airborne SAR (LS-ASAR) datasets, RISAT-1 dataset. Calibration data carried understand level LS-ASAR product that is a precursor mission Dual-Frequency L&S NASA-ISRO (NISAR) mission. It understood dominant distortion, which severely affects compared distortions, it more for higher wavelength systems. Quegan, Improved Ainsworth algorithms estimation minimization performed found Quegan algorithm suitable removing having high low crosstalk. Freeman method implemented compact-pol able considerably coherency matrix, model-based decomposition, signatures, roll invariant parameter-based analysis revealed all after were showing correct responses expected targets.