Statistical assessment of eigenvector-based target decomposition theorems in radar polarimetry

This paper concerns the analytical study of the eigen decomposition of hermitian, positive semidefinite matrices applied to PolSAR data analysis. Based on the Gaussian scattering assumption for multidimensional SAR data, the joint distribution of the sample eigenvalues of the coherency, or covariance, matrices is derived for a general case. The distribution is particularized for PolSAR data, and the moments of the sample eigenvalues, the entropy (H), and the anisotropy (A) are analyzed