Potential of RADARSAT-2 for sea ice classification

Polarimetric data acquired by the CCRS CV-580 airborne SAR are used to assess the capability of RADARSAT-2 for operational sea ice classification. The information content of the polarimetric data is illustrated by showing how specific scattering mechanisms are portrayed by the entropy, anisotropy and α-angle features. Ice type classes are derived from the full polarimetric data set using a complex Wishart classifier. The classes are then mapped into 2-D scatterplots to compare the information content between dual and fully polarimetric data. While dual polarimetric data are an improvement over single channel data, it is found that fully polarimetric data are needed to provide accurate ice classification performance.