Three-component decomposition based on stokes vector for compact polarimetric SAR under π/4 mode

This paper formulates a Stokes vector (SV) based decomposition algorithm for compact polarimetric (CP) SAR under π/4 mode. The three-component scattering model is first established by using the relationship between covariance matrix and SV, and then the contribution of each component is estimated from algebraic calculation. To solve the underdetermined equations for π/4 decomposition, the contribution of volume scattering is taken as a free parameter, under the constraint that the weighting factor of each scattering component should be nonnegative. The feasibility of this algorithm is supported by two data sets from AIRSAR and RADARSAT-2 respectively.