Faraday Rotation Estimation Based on PolSAR Data: A Denoising Technique

Abstract

Low-frequency spaceborne polarimetric radar system is susceptible to the ionospheric Faraday rotation (FR). High-quality FR estimates are required for advanced polarimetric and ionospheric applications. Noise reduction plays a key role in higher quality FR estimation. Based on the Baran filter and Bickel-Bates FR estimator, this paper proposes a denoising technique for FR estimation using spaceborne polarimetric SAR data. Experiments on L-band ALOSPALSAR data of Alaska demonstrate that this technique can achieve nice noise smoothing of FR estimates.