Understanding and validation of the polarimetric scattering of a forest for bistatic P-band SAR measurements

Etienne Everaere (1) , Elise Colin Koeniguer (1) , Laetitia Thirion-Lefevre (2) , Antonello de Martino (3)

1 ONERA - The French Aerospace Lab [Palaiseau]
2 SONDRA - Sondra, CentraleSupélec, Université Paris-Saclay (COmUE)
3 LPICM - Laboratoire de physique des interfaces et des couches minces [Palaiseau]

The objective of this paper is to propose an alternative measurement device at optical scale to help understanding of bistatic polarimetric SAR images of forests. The device is employed to measure nanoscale trunk forests with a 106 scale factor. Considering the scale invariant rule in electromagnetic scattering this device would enable to predict the Mueller matrix of a whole tree forest for P band radar measurements. The device presents the advantages to be low cost and to get a complete set of bistatic configurations at once. Moreover, the measurements are very fast and would potentially be done on infinitely diverse and well controlled forest structures. Multiplicative decompositions of the Mueller matrix are presented. We underline the trunk density influence for an entire scope of bistatic configuration.

Mots clés: P band; forest; Bistatic; invariant rule; conoscopic polarimeter

Domaines: Electromagnétisme

Etienne Everaere, Elise Colin Koeniguer, Laetitia Thirion-Lefevre, Antonello de Martino. Understanding and validation of the polarimetric scattering of a forest for bistatic P-band SAR measurements. 2014 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS 2014), Jul 2014, Quebec, Canada. pp.4556-4559, ⟨10.1109/IGARSS.2014.6947506⟩. ⟨hal-01104068⟩