Quantitative comparison of classification capability: fully polarimetric versus dual and single-polarization SAR

Abstract

Addresses the land-use classification capabilities of fully polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) versus dual-polarization and single-polarization SAR for P-, L-, and C-band frequencies. A variety of polarization combinations are investigated for application to crop and tree age classification. Based on the complex Wishart distribution for the covariance matrix, maximum likelihood classifiers for all polarization combinations are used to assess quantitative classification accuracy. Thus, this allows optimally selecting the frequency and the combination of polarizations for various applications.