Towards a more reliable estimation of forest parameters from polarimetric SAR tomography data

In this contribution, tomographic imagery obtained from estimating the 3-D localization and the polarimetric signature of backscattering sources within a forest environment from fully-polarimetric multibaseline SAR data at L- and P-bands are presented. Both, polarization diversity and spatial diversity were exploited jointly within the tomographic focusing to estimate the targets´ localization and polarimetric signature. We thereby extend our recently proposed time-domain back-projection (TDBP)-based tomographic focusing approach. The tomographic slices obtained from polarimetric spectral estimation using MLBF, Capon, and MUSIC are opposed to the results previously obtained by tomographic focusing of the individual polarization channels. The results are briefly discussed with respect to potential advancements towards more reliable estimation of forest parameters from SAR tomography data.