Extended Three-Stage Polarimetric SAR Interferometry Algorithm by Dual-Polarization Data

Until now, most polarimetric synthetic aperture radar interferometry (PolInSAR) research has been based on full-polarization (HH + HV + VH + VV) SAR data, which can provide complete polarimetric information but usually have a smaller swath and lower spatial resolution than dual-polarization (dual-pol) data. Some existing researches concern the dual-pol PolInSAR; however, these works did not perform the coherence optimization process which may make the inversion unstable. In this paper, the PolInSAR technique based on dual-pol (HH + HV) SAR data is investigated in order to demonstrate its validity for forest height retrieval and thus show that PolInSAR is better able to meet the requirements of global-scale research. We extend the three-stage inversion process and coherence optimization algorithm to dual-pol PolInSAR. In addition, based on the random volume over ground model, a search method for finding the volume-only coherence on ambiguous line segments is proposed. Finally, the dual-pol PolInSAR technique is applied to forest height estimation using airborne L-band SAR data acquired by the E-SAR system over the Traunstein test site in Germany. The forest heights estimated by dual-pol PolInSAR are compared with those estimated using the full-pol mode and also with measurements made in situ. The results show that dual-pol PolInSAR can obtain similar estimated forest heights to the full-pol mode and also that the search method for volume-only coherence retrieval can improve the inversion accuracy. The coefficient of determination (r
²
) for the relation between the dual-pol PolInSAR and the in situ measurements is 0.7287.