Analysis of three-component decomposition to compact polarimetric synthetic aperture radar

The compact polarimetric (CP) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data is directly decomposed into three canonical components involving surface, double-bounce and volume, which avoids the approximated quad-polarimetric reconstruction based on several promising assumptions. Through several algebraic operations, the three-component decomposition under CP modes (π/4 mode and right circular transmit, linear receive (CTLR) mode) is deduced. With the experiments by using two classical data sets - San Francisco data from AIRSAR system and Oberpfaffenhofen data from ESAR system, the feasibility and flexibility of the CP decomposition are validated. Also, it has been found that the use of CP data can be further extended into many other polarimetric applications, and the three-component decomposition can achieve a better result with CTLR mode than with π/4 mode.