Polarimetric SAR speckle filtering and its impact on classification

Abstract

Speckle reduction of polarimetric SAR imagery has been studied using several different approaches. Most of these approaches exploited the statistical independence between HH, HV and VV channels. The statistical characteristics, such as correlation between channels, and polarimetric signature preservation, were not addressed. This paper proposes a new approach in polarimetric SAR filtering. This new approach emphasizes introducing no cross-talk, preserving polarimetric properties and statistical correlations between channels. In addition, the image sharpness is better maintained. The impact of using this polarimetric speckle filtering on terrain classification is also studied. NASA/JPL Les Landes polarimetric P-band and C-band SAR data is used for illustration.