A model incorporating orientation angle shift effect for polarimetric SAR calibration

The various applications of polarimetric SAR data have brought to the fore questions of polarimetric calibration. Most polarimetric calibration methods based on distributed targets employed reflection symmetry assumption, which might be inconsistent with the truth due to a possible orientation angle shift, and therefore would skew the polarimetric signatures of targets. In this paper, a model incorporating orientation angle shift effect is introduced to characterize the POL SAR data, and a numeric algorithm is presented. The proposed calibration method can preserve the orientation angle information precisely. Simulations and real SAR data experiments are performed to test the proposed method.