Marine added-value products using RADARSAT-2 fine quad-polarization

In this paper the high-quality performance of fine quad-polarimetric RADARSAT-2 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data is shown as the basis for new enhanced value-added products for remote sensing marine applications. A unitary physical model, based on the covariance matrix C, is exploited to design two new SAR marine polarimetric value-added products, one for oil slicks and the other for manmade metallic target observation. Both make use of a new physical SAR processing methodology that relies on: a) Cloude–Pottier target decomposition theorem, b) the symmetry properties of the observed scene, and c) the availability of the RADARSAT-2 fine quad-polarization mode. Experimental results demonstrated the powerful capabilities of both procedures that take full advantage of fine quad-polarimetric RADARSAT-2 data for polarimetric SAR observation of oil fields.