A new method for a posteriori polarimetric SAR calibration

Fully polarimetric SAR data analysis has found wide application for terrain classification, land-use, soil moisture and ground cover classification. Critical to all analyses and applications is accurate calibration of the relative amplitudes of and phases between the various polarimetric channels. Here we develop a "minimalist" approach to polarimetric calibration, wherein only the weakest of constraints, reciprocity, is initially imposed upon the data. Additional parameters are self-consistently estimated from the data. In this manner channel imbalances and cross-talk are estimated without unduly biasing the resulting polarimetric information.