Phase decomposition in polarimetric SAR interferometry

The authors formulate a new coherent decomposition algorithm for polarimetric SAR interferometry which allows the decomposition of interferometric problems into a set of coherent scattering mechanisms. The proposed algorithm allows the generation of interferograms related to certain independent scattering mechanism and consequently the extraction of the height difference between them. The potential of the proposed technique is demonstrated by first results from the evaluation of full-polarimetric interferometric airborne data.