REVISITING THE DUAL POLARIZATION ALPHA USING THE DESCHAMPS PARAMETER

Abstract

In continuance to quad-pol SAR data analysis, Cloude proposed the eigenvalue-eigenvector decomposition of dual-pol 2 × 2 covariance matrix to compute the target characterization parameter, α. In this study, we explicitly demonstrate an alternative approach to compute the dual-pol α using Deschamps parameters defined using a spherical triangle structure on the Poincar ́e sphere. The geometrical construction provides inherent visual information in terms of the Stokes vectors for diverse targets characterized by HH-HV and VV-VH data. This technique produces the same result as proposed by Cloude. We utilized canonical targets and airborne SAR data to demonstrate the results with the proposed approach.