Speaker
Description
Characterizing the short-term temporal evolution of SAR coherence across frequency bands and polarization channels is important for interpreting radar observations of vegetated scenes and for defining suitable acquisition strategies for land-monitoring applications.
This work investigates these dependencies using observations of Mediterranean forest and vineyard scenes acquired with a multifrequency, fully polarimetric ground-based synthetic aperture radar (GBSAR). The system operates at five frequencies: 435 MHz (P band), 1.27 GHz (L band), 3.2 GHz (S band), 5.4 GHz (C band), and 9.6 GHz (X band), acquiring HH, HV, VH, and VV polarization channels in each band. Its ground-based configuration enables repeated observations of the same scene under controlled acquisition geometry and flexible temporal sampling, providing a common experimental framework for comparing temporal coherence across radar configurations and scene types.
Initial short-duration measurement campaigns have demonstrated single-look complex (SLC) image formation, coherence estimation, and interferometric processing across the supported configurations. Building on these demonstrations, extended measurement campaigns will be conducted to characterize temporal coherence as a function of the interval between acquisitions, frequency band, and polarization channel. Coherence will be estimated between repeated observations within each band and polarization channel, and its temporal evolution will be compared across configurations for the selected forest and vineyard targets. Particular attention will be given to differences in coherence persistence between frequency bands, polarization channels, and vegetation types.
The study will provide a systematic experimental characterization of short-term temporal coherence in vegetated environments, and assess how frequency and polarization diversity can inform the selection of radar configurations and observation intervals for land-monitoring applications.