Comparison of parametric and non-parametric approaches for the full-rank polarimetric SAR tomography of volumetric environments

This paper proposes and compares different spectral estimation techniques to perform polarimetric 3-D imaging using SAR tomography (POLTOM). Parametric approaches based on the Random Volume over Ground model as well as non parametric techniques are proposed to derive 3-D full second-order polarimetric representations. Their theoretical performance is evaluated over simulated data sets and they are applied to the characterization of forested environments at L and P bands.