Classification of land cover observed by airborne polarimetric SAR and its validation

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The purpose of this research is to pursuit the possibility of AIRBORNE POLARIMATRIC SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR for classifying and identifying land cover with polarimatric function. Fully polarimatric scattering matrix in the L-band is obtained by Pi-SAR (Polarimatric and Interferometric SAR), developed by CRL/NASDA. During the period of 1999-2001, Pi-SAR flew over Niigata Area several times. Fortunately, AIR SAR developed by NASA-JPL also flew over the same area in 2000, which eventually happened due to their Pacific Rim Campaign. Under these circumstances, we carried out our basic research on principle of radar polarimetry, SAR image classification, as well as laboratory measurement with validation, mainly focused on the following topics :1. Establishment of radar polarimetry principle and classification scheme based on the theory2. Polarimetric calibration of acquired data3. Validation of developed scheme in the laboratory experiment4. Derivation of efficient polarimatric index for classifying mart made targets ; against natural targets5. Development of classification software6. Validation of SAR data with ground truth measurementThe above topics were successfully carried out in the period and several results were presented in international symposia and workshops. Most of them were successful, however, some still need to be resolved. The main difficulty was the information obtained by radar is radar scene specific, which requires specific information on the scene for accurate classification and identification. The overall classification accuracy with polarimetric information exceeded more than 80 % compared to 60 % for single polarization channel. This shows the advantage of polarization information for remote sensing technology.