Calibration of polarimetric SAR images by means of distributed target statistics and scatterometer measurements

Presents a method the authors have developed to fully calibrate polarimetric SAR images, which relies only on distributed target backscatter and makes use of comparison with corresponding scatterometer data. First, within the developed framework of full polarimetric calibration, the need to deal with statistically homogeneous targets is stressed in order to perform the calibration parameters estimation. The authors suggest a slight modification of Klein´s algorithm which removes the scattering reciprocity assumption, for the cross-talk reduction step. Then, from preliminary analysis of the MAC-Europe campaign on the Orgeval site (1991), it is shown that radiometric cross-comparison with scatterometer data is feasible