Feature utility in polarimetric radar image classification

The information content in polarimetric SAR images is examined, and the polarimetric image variables containing the information that is important to the classification of terrain features in the images are determined. It is concluded that accurate classification can be done when just over half of the image variables are retained. A reduction in image data dimensionality gives storage savings, and can lead to the improvement of classifier performance. In addition, it is shown that a simplified radar system with only phase-calibrated CO-POL or SINGLE TX channels can give classification performance which approaches that of a fully polarimetric radar.