Polarimetric SAR interferometry for vegetable vertical structure parameters extraction

Polarimetric SAR interferometry is much more sensitive to the distribution of oriented objects in a vegetated land surface than either polarimetric or interferometry alone. In this paper, we propose a polarimetric SAR interferometry technique for the estimation of parameters characterizing the vertical structure vegetated land surfaces. Based on simple physical model, we use SIR-C/X-SAR full polarimetric data to calculate the optimized interferometric coherences. The test site is Tianshan and its surrounding area, where pine trees are planted and the characteristics are well known. As a result, we could estimate the tree height distribution, and the quantitative evaluation is presented to relate the phase center differences and the tree types and the polarization combinations.