Instrument-driven constrains on scattering modeling for TerraSAR-X POLSAR data

Abstract

This paper shows the necessity to include the impact of instrument-driven constrains in the physical modeling of polarimetric data from spaceborne SAR missions, specifically for TerraSAR-X (TSX) case. The intrinsic acquisition of fully (quad-pol) polarimetric data, exploiting the dual-receive antenna (DRA) mode, may induce two additional sources of decorrelation when observing challenging dynamic scenarios, such as the ocean or sea: limited signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) as the receive antenna is halved and temporal decor-relation induced over the along-track configuration (spatial baseline between the polarimetic channels) due to internal clutter motion. Experimental quad-pol TSX data over the ocean has been used to study the applicability of the original X-Bragg model as well as its extension accounting for these system/scenario dependent limitations, which shows a much better fitting.