GLACIER SURFACE MONITORING BY MAXIMIZING MUTUAL INFORMATION
The contribution of Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) images compared with the single-channel SAR in terms of temporal scene characterization has been found and described to add valuable information in the literature. However, despite a number of recent studies focusing on single pola...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Copernicus Publications
2012-07-01
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| Series: | The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences |
| Online Access: | https://www.int-arch-photogramm-remote-sens-spatial-inf-sci.net/XXXIX-B7/41/2012/isprsarchives-XXXIX-B7-41-2012.pdf |
| Summary: | The contribution of Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) images compared with the single-channel SAR in terms of temporal
scene characterization has been found and described to add valuable information in the literature. However, despite a number of
recent studies focusing on single polarized glacier monitoring, the potential of polarimetry to estimate the surface velocity of glaciers
has not been explored due to the complex mechanism of polarization through glacier/snow. In this paper, a new approach to the problem
of monitoring glacier surface velocity is proposed by means of temporal PolSAR images, using a basic concept from information
theory: <i>Mutual Information</i> (MI). The proposed polarimetric tracking method applies the MI to measure the statistical dependence
between temporal polarimetric images, which is assumed to be maximal if the images are geometrically aligned. Since the proposed
polarimetric tracking method is very powerful and general, it can be implemented into any kind of multivariate remote sensing data
such as multi-spectral optical and single-channel SAR images.<br><br>
The proposed polarimetric tracking is then used to retrieve surface velocity of Aletsch glacier located in Switzerland and of Inyltshik
glacier in Kyrgyzstan with two different SAR sensors; Envisat C-band (single polarized) and DLR airborne L-band (fully polarimetric)
systems, respectively. The effect of number of channel (polarimetry) into tracking investigations demonstrated that the presence of
snow, as expected, effects the location of the phase center in different polarization, such as glacier tracking with temporal HH compared
to temporal VV channels. Shortly, a change in polarimetric signature of the scatterer can change the phase center, causing a question
of how much of what I am observing is motion then penetration. In this paper, it is shown that considering the multi-channel SAR
statistics, it is possible to optimize the separate these contributions. |
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| ISSN: | 1682-1750 2194-9034 |