A review about alternatives to classical Polarimetric SAR parameters

Many polarimetric parameters used either in radar or optics polarimetry share common features. In this paper we summarize the alternatives inspired by optics polarimetry and compare them to classical parameters used in SAR polarimetry. In general it is possible to distinguish depolarization properties of targets which has to be estimated from the coherence matrices or Mueller matrices, and deterministic properties, which can be extracted from Sinclair matrix. Deterministic features are further subdivided into two families. The first one involves relative amplitude changes, the second one include phase change effects. Each classical polarimetric parameters, for example from Cloude Pottier or Lu and Chipman decomposition belong to a specific category. For a given application the most suitable parameter for each category can be found. Our approach combines three parameter categories in a efficient way. As an example we are proposing a new colored representation of the polarimetric information based on retardance, diattenuation and scattering diversity parameters.