Statistical Assessment of the PolInSAR Coherence Set for Geophysical Media

Inhalt:
This paper introduces the polarimetric interferometric coherence set statistics taking into account the whole polarization state space. The first part of this paper is devoted to the analysis of the inner structure of polarimetric interferometric coherences – in form of coherence set geometry (the numerical range approach) and distribution (probability density function) in the complex plane. The second part deals with the assessment of physical parameter estimation methods by statistical inference using the coherence set statistics. In particular, the random volume over ground model with thermal and temporal decorrelation sources is considered. The presented methods are of importance for validation of techniques which utilize polarimetric interferometry and for understanding of the PolInSAR coherence properties.