Biomass related parameter retrieving from quad-pol images based on Freeman-Durden decomposition

Microwave remote sensing (MRS) has been widely employed for biomass estimation. However, the retrieval of biomass related parameters for fractional areas with both trees and bare ground areas remains a problem unsolved. The Freeman-Durden decomposition (FD) was developed for applications with vegetation and could make efficient use of both amplitude and phase information provided by polarized MRS data. Based on FD, the authors devised a methodology to solve the problematic caused by discontinuous distribution of vegetation. Effectiveness of the proposed method was tested by experiments on RADARSAT-2 quad-pol images and corresponding in situ data.