Single pass polarimetric SAR interferometry

During the past ten years, the NASA/JPL AIRSAR system has produced polarimetric and interferometric SAR data. SAR polarimetry is useful for characterizing scattering mechanisms while SAR interferometry yields high resolution topographic maps. For bare surfaces, the interferometric SAR topography represents true ground height. However, the radar height is biased by the volume scattering contribution from tree canopies for vegetated areas. Recently, S.R. Cloude and K.P. Papathanassiou (1997) developed a new radar technique called polarimetric SAR interferometry. This technique can produce a radar topographic map corresponding to a particular scattering mechanism. In this way, both true ground height and tree height may be derived. The NASA/JPL AIRSAR will be upgraded to collect the C-band polarimetric SAR interferometric data in May, 1998. In this work, the hardware modifications required for this upgrade are presented. Since the data are collected in the single pass interferometric mode, one can study various combinations of interferometric/polarimetric data without suffering temporal decorrelation. Both theoretical and preliminary test results are discussed