The Effect of Orientation Angle Compensation on Coherency Matrix and Polarimetric Target Decompositions

Abstract:
The orientation angle of scattering media affects the polarimetric radar signatures. It is desirable to compensate the data for the orientation effect before applying scattering model based decompositions for various applications. This paper investigates the effect of orientation compensation on coherency matrix and the scattering model based decompositions by Freeman and Durden and by Yamaguchi et al. We will show that after the orientation compensation, the volume scattering power is consistently decreased, while the double bounce power has increased. The surface scattering power is relatively unchanged, and the helicity power is rotational invariant. All these characteristics can be explained by the compensation effect on the nine elements of coherency matrix.