Coastline extraction and coastal area classification via SAR hybrid-polarimetry architecture

This study aims at addressing coastline extraction and coastal area classification using a new polarimetric SAR (polSAR) architecture, namely the Hybrid-polarity (HP) architecture that belongs to the class of compact-polarimetric (CP) SAR. First the continuous coastline is extracted using HP features; then, the inland area is classified according to the dominant scattering mechanism. Experiments undertaken using HP data emulated starting from actual fine-quad polarimetric RadarSAT-2 SAR data confirm the soundness of the proposed approach.