Deorientation Effect Investigation for Model-Based Decomposition Over Oriented Built-Up Areas

Deorientation processing has been incorporated into model-based decomposition to cure the overestimation of volume scattering contribution, by rotating the coherency matrix to minimize the cross-polarization term. First, the derivation of the rotation angle is clarified for avoiding the ambiguity. Moreover, even with the implementation of deorientation processing, oriented built-up areas with large orientation angles are still misjudged as volume scattering dominant. Further to the investigation of the deorientation effect, we focus on oriented built-up patches. A parameter, named dominant polarization orientation angle (DPOA), is introduced to label each patch. The behavior of the deorientation on coherency matrix and model-based decomposition over purely oriented built-up areas with respect toDPOAis disclosed. Experimental studies from the Advanced Land Observing Satellite/Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (ALOS/PALSAR) polarimetric SAR data set demonstrate that model-based decompositions with deorientation work well for oriented built-up areas when |DPOA| ≤ 22.5°. However, for large |DPOA| (e.g., |DPOA| >; 22.5°), even with the deorientation processing, for the conventional decompositions which assume that only the volume scattering contributes to the cross-polarization term, the decomposed volume scattering power may also be dominant even for purely oriented built-up areas. Thereby, misinterpretation still occurs, motivating further advancements.