## Book: Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar

Our open access book “Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar – Principles and Applications”, funded by the European Space Agency, has been recently published by Springer. This open access book focuses on the practical application of electromagnetic polarimetry principles in Earth remote sensing with an educational purpose. In the last decade, the operations from fully polarimetric synthetic aperture radar such as the Japanese ALOS/PalSAR, the Canadian Radarsat-2 and the German TerraSAR-X and their easy data access for scientific use have developed further the research and data applications at L,C and X band. As a consequence, the wider distribution of polarimetric data sets across the remote sensing community boosted activity and development in polarimetric SAR applications, also in view of future missions. Numerous experiments with real data from space borne platforms are shown, with the aim of giving an up-to-date and complete treatment of the unique benefits of fully polarimetric synthetic aperture radar data in five different domains: forest, agriculture, cryosphere, urban and oceans.

Book chapters:

• Basic Principles of SAR Polarimetry by C. López-Martínez, E. Pottier
• Forest Applications by K. P. Papathanassiou, S. R. Cloude, M. Pardini, M. J. Quiñones, D. Hoekman, L. Ferro-Famil et al.
• Agriculture and Wetland Applications by J. M. Lopez-Sanchez, J. D. Ballester-Berman, F. Vicente-Guijalba, S. R. Cloude, H. McNairn, J. Shang et al.
• Cryosphere Applications by I. Hajnsek, G. Parrella, A. Marino, T. Eltoft, M. Necsoiu, L. Eriksson et al.
• Urban Applications by E. Colin-Koeniguer, N. Trouve, Y. Yamaguchi, Y. Huang, L. Ferro-Famil, V. D. Navarro Sanchez et al.
• Ocean Applications by M. Migliaccio, F. Nunziata, A. Marino, C. Brekke, S. Skrunes

## A Multi-Frequency SDR-Based GBSAR: System Overview and First Results

Amézaga, Adrià; López-Martínez, Carlos; Jové, Roger. 2021. “A Multi-Frequency SDR-Based GBSAR: System Overview and First Results” MDPI Remote Sens. 13, no. 9: 1613

Summary

This work describes a system-level overview of a multi-frequency GBSAR built around a high performance software defined radio (SDR). The main goal of the instrument is to be employed as a demonstrator and experimental platform for multi-frequency GBSAR campaigns. The system is capable of operating in P, L, C and X-bands, and signal generation and digital signal processing are customizable and reconfigurable through software. An overview of the software and hardware and implementations of the system are presented. The operation of the system is demonstrated with two measuring campaigns showing focused amplitude images at different frequencies. It is shown how the usage of SDR for GBSAR systems is a viable design option.

## A Model-free Four Component Scattering Power Decomposition for Polarimetric SAR Data

S. Dey, A. Bhattacharya, A. C. Frery, C. López-Martínez and Y. S. Rao, “A Model-free Four Component Scattering Power Decomposition for Polarimetric SAR Data,” in IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, Early Access, 2021

Summary

Target decomposition methods of polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) data explain scattering information from a target. In this regard, several conventional model-based methods utilize scattering power components to analyze polarimetric SAR data. However, the typical hierarchical process to enumerate power components uses various branching conditions, leading to several limitations. These techniques assume \textit{ad hoc} scattering models within a radar resolution cell. Therefore, the use of several models makes the computation of scattering powers ambiguous. Some common issues of model-based decompositions are related to the compensation of the orientation angle about the radar line of sight and the negative power components’ occurrence. We propose a model-free four-component scattering power decomposition that alleviates these issues. In the proposed approach, we use the non-conventional 3D Barakat degree of polarization to obtain the scattered electromagnetic wave’s polarization state. The degree of polarization is used to obtain the even-bounce, odd-bounce, and diffused scattering power components. Along with this, a measure of target scattering asymmetry is also proposed, which is then suitably utilized to obtain the helicity power. All the power components are roll-invariant, non-negative and unambiguous. In addition to this, we propose an unsupervised clustering technique that preserves the dominance of the scattering power components for different targets. This clustering technique assists in understanding the importance of diverse scattering mechanisms based on target characteristics. The technique adequately captures the clusters’ variations from one target to another according to their physical and geometrical properties.