Polarimetric scattering signatures based on local-plane surface representation in multi-baseline Pol-TomoSAR for urban areas

Abstract:
SAR Tomography (TomoSAR) exploiting multi-spatial and multi-temporal acquisitions and synthesizing an additional aperture in elevation, allows to separate multiple scatterers within a range azimuth resolution cell. In urban areas TomoSAR achieves a 3-D reconstruction of the illuminated scene, estimating the reflectivity of multiple scatterers located on the ground or on buildings at different heights, whose contributions are superimposed in the same range-azimuth resolution cell. Polarimetric SAR systems allow also to identify and separate the contributions of different backscattering mechanisms, such as odd-bounce, double-bounce and volumetric mechanism, by means of the exploitation of different polarimetric features. In this paper, the use of multi-baseline Pol-TomoSAR techniques is investigated with the objective of obtaining an increased accuracy estimation of polarimetric features, in such a way to improve the scattering mechanism identification.