Contents

• Polarimetry for Dummies
  • Oscillations and Waves
  • Electromagnetic waves
  • Polarization
    • Polarization methods
  
  
• Wave Polarization
  • Introduction
  • Wave Polarization
    • Special Cases of Polarizations
    • Polarization Ratio
  • The Coordinate System
  • Plane Wave Representation
    • Stokes Vector Representation
    • Jones Vector Representation
    • Change of Polarization Basis
  
  
• Polarimetric Description of Scatterers
  • The Jones Matrix
  • The Stokes Matrix
  • Polarization Synthesis
  • The Scattering Vector
  • Non-Deterministic Scatterers
  
  
• Target Decomposition
  • Context
  • Voltage Reflection Matrices Based Decompositions
    • Polar Decomposition of the Scattering Matrix
    • The Boost and Rotation Transformations
    • The Polar Decomposition for Symmetric Scattering Matrix
  • The Vorticity Concept
  • Power Reflection Matrices Based Decompositions
  • Interpretation of Scattering Mechanisms
  
  
• Applications
  • Classification of Fully Polarimetric SAR Data
    • The Entropy - Feature Space
    • Classification Approaches
    • H - classification
    • J.S. Lee Approach
    • Entropy / / Anisotropy Approach
    • H-- Approach
  • Soilmoisture and Surface Roughness by Sophie Allain
  • Anti-Personal-Landmine Detection
    • Polarimetric Features
  
  
• From the Maxwell Equations to the Plane Wave
  • The Maxwell Equations
  • Electromagnetic Waves
  • Plane Waves
  
  
• How to do a ...
  • Before you start
  • The data sets
  • Pauli Decomposition
  • Sphere/Diplane/Helix Decomposition
  • Downloads
  • Polar Decomposition
  • Entropie/(/Anisotropie) Decomposition
  • Other Decompositions and How-to's
  
  
• Glossary and Acronyms
• Symbols
• References and Recommended Literature
• About this document ...

Introduction

The extraction of information from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data has been a promising area of research for many years. In order to achieve reliable results, multi parameter measurements are generally necessary. Multi-temporal, multi-frequency and multi-polarization data have been suggested for remote sensing applications. While multi-temporal and multi-frequency approaches are widely used and fairly well documented, SAR polarimetry is a relatively new approach which yields some advantages over the conventional methods.

This tutorial is meant to give the interested reader an introduction into the field of SAR polarimetry. In order to make this treatment useful for as many people as possible we try to cover for a wide range of background levels. I tried to write the chapters as independent as possible. This means if you have some background in SAR and polarimetry and you are just interested in a special aspect (e.g. decomposition, application etc.) you might want to skip the parts in front. However, if you have no, or an only very limited background, in the field of electromagnetic waves and/or wave propagation, or if you have never heard about polarimetry before please start at the beginning Polarimetry for Dummies. A good part of this treatment is meant for people who really want (or are forced by their supervisor ;o)) to apply polarimetric techniques to SAR data. Because of this, the following treatment will contain a lot of formulas, equations, matrices and all that boring mathematical stuff. For the reading and understanding of this tutorial you should have some basic knowledge and experience in the field of SAR (if not read the SAR tutorial by Andreas Reigber or something similar). In order to make the navigation a bit easier I tried to write a short summary at the beginning of each chapter followed by some key words. This treatment is neither complete nor exhaustive, if your are interested in something more specific you will find in the appendix a list of references an literature. In the application part you can find something about the application of the outlined theory to 'real' problems. The application part does not contain a detailed analysis or complete results, that's published elsewhere in detail. The application part is only meant to give you an idea about possible applications of polarimetry.

I don't claim that this thing covers all that is to say about polarimetry, actually in the beginning the idea was some nice little tutorial with 10 or 20 pages. But somehow the thing exploded. So instead of seeing this tutorial as a finished thing I rather prefer to see it as a starting point. So if you miss something or want to add something pleas contact me or Anderl. Especially a collection of frequently asked questions would be a nice thing to have. So if you have questions or had questions/problems and found solutions for it. Please mail them to me and I'll try to set up a FAQ in the future. So far so good(?) so what. I hope you enjoy the reading.