Road Surface Roughness Estimation Using Polarimetric SAR Data

The road surface roughness directly influences the grip and skid resistance of the vehicles. Since these parameters are relevant for the safety of the road users, they have to be continuously monitored to keep track of its changes. The potential of airborne polarimetric SAR to remotely monitor the road surface roughness is investigated in this study using fully polarimetric X-band data acquired with DLR's airborne radar sensor F-SAR. The polarimetric analysis revealed that the anisotropy and coherency matrix (T3) elements are sensitive to the road surface roughness. Additionally SAR backscatter based empirical models for surface roughness estimation were investigated.