Recent Advances in Polarimetry and Polarimetric Interferometry

Radar polarimetry radar Interferometry and polarimetric SAR interferometry represent the current culmination in ´microwave remote sensing´ technology, but we still need to progress very considerably in order to reach the limits of physical realizability. Whereas with radar polarimetry the textural fine-structure, target orientation, symmetries and material constituents can be recovered with considerable improvement above that of standard ´amplitude-only´ radar; by implementing ´radar interferometry´ the spatial (in depth) structure can be explored. With polarimetric interferometric synthetic aperture radar (POL-IN-SAR) imaging, it is possible to recover such co-registered textural and spatial information from POL-IN-SAR digital image data sets simultaneously, including the extraction of digital elevation maps (DEM) from either polarimetric (scattering matrix) or interferometric (dual antenna) SAR systems. Simultaneous polarimetric-plus-interferometric SAR imaging offers the additional benefit of obtaining co-registered textural-plus-spatial three-dimensional POL-IN-DEM information, which when applied to repeat-pass image-overlay interferometry provides differential background validation and environmental stress-change information with highly improved accuracy. Then, by either designing multiple dual polarization antenna POL-IN-SAR systems or by applying advanced POL-IN-SAR image compression techniques, will result in ´POL-arimetric TOMO-graphic´ (multi-interferometric) SAR or POL-TOMO-SAR imaging. By advancing these EWB-D-POL-IN/TOMO-SAR imaging modes, we are slowly but steadily approaching the ultimate goal of eventually realizing airborne and spaceborne ´geo-environmental background validation, stress assessment, and stress-change monitoring and wide-area military surveillance of the terrestrial and planetary covers´.