On the Classification of Sea Ice Types Using Simulated Radarsat Constellation Mission (rcm) Compact Polarimetric Sar Parameters

A Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) system with hybrid-polarity architecture constitutes a significant advancement in the field of radar remote sensing. This new architecture system is a Compact Polarimetric (CP) SAR system which transmits a circular polarization and receives two mutually coherent orthogonal linear polarizations. This SAR system reduces some of the design constraints of the spaceborne satellite, allowing for a low-cost and low-mass SAR system. The main advantage of this SAR system is that it has a greater amount of information than the standard dual-pol mode, while covering the swath width of ScanSAR imagery. Therefore, a growing interest has been raised for CP SAR systems as a possible tradeoff in full quad-pol SAR systems. A CP SAR mode will be included in future SAR missions, such as the Canadian RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM) and the Japanese Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2 (ALOS-2). This paper is a first attempt towards the selection of the optimum CP parameters for sea ice classification. A set of twenty three CP parameters are assessed. A late-winter case study image is used, encompassing two sea ice types and one open water state.