Discrimination potential of X-band polarimetric SAR data

In anticipation of X-band polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). data from future sensors, we investigated the potential of X-band fully polarimetric data for discriminating between the principal classes present in a study site near Avignon, France. Decomposition and analysis techniques have been applied to a dataset acquired by the ONERA airborne RAMSES (Radar Aeroporte Multi-Spectral d'Etude des Signatures) SAR. Results show that X-band provides some discrimination capability. The polarimetric parameters, entropy and (alpha) over bar -angle, show clearly that these signature classes are grouped into five clusters corresponding to physical scattering characteristics. The introduction of the anisotropy parameter does not increase our ability to distinguish between different classes whose clusters are in the same entropy/(alpha) over bar -angle zone. The correlation observed between the radar signal and the surface roughness over bare soils is very low.