Multibaseline Polarimetric SAR Interferometry Coherence Optimization

Abstract

This letter analyzes different approaches for polarimetric optimization of multibaseline (MB) interferometric coherences. Two general methods are developed to simultaneously optimize coherences for more than two data sets. The first method provides every data set with a distinct dominant scattering mechanism (SM). The second optimization method is constrained to use equal SMs at all data sets. As the experimental results indicate, MB coherence optimization does improve the accuracy in the estimation of dominant SMs and the associated interferometric phases. Both methods are evaluated on real data acquired by the German Aerospace Agency (DLR)’s enhanced synthetic aperture radar sensor (ESAR) at L-band.