An entropy based classification scheme for land applications of polarimetric SAR

The authors outline a new scheme for parameterizing polarimetric scattering problems, which has application in the quantitative analysis of polarimetric SAR data. The method relies on an eigenvalue analysis of the coherency matrix and employs a three-level Bernoulli statistical model to generate estimates of the average target scattering matrix parameters from the data. The scattering entropy is a key parameter is determining the randomness in this model and is seen as a fundamental parameter in assessing the importance of polarimetry in remote sensing problems. The authors show application of the method to some important classical random media scattering problems and apply it to POLSAR data from the NASA/JPL AIRSAR data base.