3-D Monitoring of Trees by Polarimetric GB-SAR

Inhalt:
The microwave scattering property of vegetation and ground structures is an important feature for a wide range of environmental issues related to the natural conditions. We have developed a broadband polarimetric groundbased SAR (Pol-GB-SAR) system for vegetation studies. Using the developed SAR system, measurements on a cherry tree in three different conditions, namely in buds before blooming, blooming and voluptuous leaves, were contiguously produced. The frequency range was 1 GHz to 5 GHz, which covered from L-band to C-band. Three-dimensional (3-D) images were reconstructed from the acquired data by a series of signal processing procedure. Analyzing the polarimetric images of each measurement, differences among the different polarizations were observed. This system provided valuable information about the scattering features of the cherry tree in different conditions. The results of polarimetric analysis are presented in this paper, which show good agreement with the ground truth.