Analysis of polarimetric vessel signatures in SAR image based on polarimetric decomposition

In this paper, vessel characterization is investigated using fully polarimetric Radarsat-2 SAR data. Polarimetric decompositions, including coherent decompositions, decomposition based on eigenvector analysis and model based decomposition, are applied to the quad-pol data to investigate vessel´s scattering mechanism. Corresponding AIS and vessel photographs were acquired as ground truth data to facilitate analysis. Three types of vessels, such as bulk carrier, oil tanker and container ship, were investigated. Results show that the stable dominant scatters in a vessel and their scattering mechanism are expected as efficient features for vessel classification.