Polinsar Ground and Volume Separation for Polarimetric Change Analysis in Agricultural Monitoring

This paper explores the use of Polarimetric SAR Interferometry (PolInSAR) in order to separate the Ground and Volume components of the SAR signal in the context of agricultural monitoring. This separation assumes a PolInSAR two-layer model and allows to extract the covariance matrix of each component. Then, a polarimetric change analysis technique may be employed to analyze independently the temporal evolution of the ground and volume components.The technique is evaluated with real data from the DLR’s F-SAR sensor CROPEX campaign, containing fully polarimetric PolInSAR data at L-, C- and X-band frequencies. Special attention is given to the validity of the PolInSAR two-layer volume at different frequencies and acquisition dates and the limitations of this separation technique.