Polarimetric modeling and parameter estimation with applications to remote sensing

Develops and analyzes two parametric models in which electromagnetic plane waves carrying polarimetric information are received. The first model considers estimation of the polarimetric response of a surface by measuring the reflections of actively generated waves. The second considers estimation of the polarization of passively generated waves. Both models have applications to remote sensing. The authors propose a natural parametrization of the distribution of the received signal. Using the Cramer-Rao bound, they characterize the best possible accuracy of unbiased estimators of these parameters. Simple estimators are given. Both models are fitted into a common framework and compared.