Polarimetric Scattering Similarity Between a Random Scatterer and a Canonical Scatterer

In this letter, we propose a novel parameter to measure the scattering similarity between a random scatterer and a canonical scatterer. Compared with the similarity parameter proposed by Yang, the novel parameter not only has some advantages, such as its independence of the spans of a coherence matrix, but also can be applied directly in the case of a random scatterer made up of multiscattering centers. As an example, the novel parameter is adopted to extract some scattering characteristics of a target. With the full polarimetric L-band airborne synthetic aperture radar data, we illustrate the veracity of the novel parameter in measuring scattering similarity and its application in terrain classification.