Phase information contained in meter-scale SAR images

摘要

The properties of single look complex SAR satellite images have already been analyzed by many investigators. A common belief is that, apart from inverse SAR methods or polarimetric applications, no information can be gained from the phase of each pixel. This belief is based on the assumption that we obtain uniformly distributed random phases when a sufficient number of small-scale scatterers are mixed in each image pixel. However, the random phase assumption does no longer hold for typical high resolution urban remote sensing scenes, when a limited number of prominent human-made scatterers with near-regular shape and sub-meter size lead to correlated phase patterns. If the pixel size shrinks to a critical threshold of about 1 meter, the reflectance of built-up urban scenes becomes dominated by typical metal reflectors, corner-like structures, and multiple scattering. The resulting phases are hard to model, but one can try to classify a scene based on the phase characteristics of neighboring image pixels. We provide a "cooking recipe" of how to analyze existing phase patterns that extend over neighboring pixels.