Polarimetry in Wideband Interferometric Sensing and Imaging

"WISIP: Wideband (/spl mu/Hz-PHz) Interferometric Sensing and Imaging Polarimetry" has become an indispensable tool in wide area environmental surveillance of the terrestrial and planetary covers. It allows dynamic optimal image feature extraction of significant characteristics of desirable target and/or target sections with simultaneous suppression of undesirable background clutter/speckle at hitherto unknown clarity and of never achieved quality. "WISIP" may be adopted to the detection, recognition, and identification (DRI) of any stationary, moving, or vibrating target versus arbitrary stationary, dynamically changing or moving geophysical environments. A comprehensive overview is presented on how these modern high resolution/precision complete polarimetric coregistered signature sensing and interferometric POL-SAR imaging techniques, complemented by 111 integration of novel navigational electronic tools, such as DGPS, will advance electromagnetic vector wave sensing and imaging towards limits of physical realizability. Various examples utilizing NASA-JPL/AIR-SAR, NAWC/P3-POL-SAR, DLR-OPH/DO-POL-SAR airborne, ERS-1, JERS-1 satellite and SIR-C/X-SAR shuttle imaging data sets dealing with the recent Mississippi-Missouri/USA 1993 and Werra/FRG floods and various earthquake surface deformation events will be presented for demonstrating the utility of WISIP.<>