Speckle filtering of SAR data for polarimetric interferometry applications

The authors propose a new method for the speckle filtering of polarimetric interferometry data. Polarimetric interferometry is a new research area that has great potential for vegetation characterization and tree height estimation. As in other SAR applications, speckle is a problem. The commonly applied 5×5 boxcar filter has the undesirable effect of blurring both amplitudes and phases. The phase terms from the cross-correlation between two polarimetric SAR data sets contain the important interferometry information. The new method emphasizes not introducing cross talk, preserving polarimetric and interferometric information. Comparison will be made with the commonly applied 5x5 boxcar filter. Repeat-pass polarimetric interferometry data is used for illustration