Characterization of basic scattering mechanisms using laboratory based polarimetric synthetic aperture radar imaging

Understanding basic scattering mechanisms is critical to characterize objects in polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) imaging. For classifications from PolSAR data and modeling polarimetric signatures, characterization of the basic scattering mechanisms is required with good ground truth information. This paper discusses about a low cost laboratory based PolSAR imaging system to characterize the basic scattering mechanisms. Polarimetric SAR images with single surface reflection is captured that represent single bounce scattering. PolSAR image of a real scene is recorded and the image is overlaid on visible satellite imagery for interpretation. The main motivation behind this work is to collect polarimetric SAR data with ground truth information that represents the basic scattering mechanisms with full control over the scene and the radar.