Studies of Ocean's scattering properties based on Airsar data

The scattering properties of ocean are studied based on the measured AIRSAR data in this paper from 3 different sides, which are statistical analysis of sea clutter, the variety trend of polarimetric characters with different incidence angle and ship-sea contrast. The statistical analysis base on KS test shows that the co-pol channels can be fitted well using K distribution under the incidence angles range from 10° to 66°, but the x-pol channel can be fitted well only under a certain narrower incidence angle range. The polarimetric characters show different variety trends with the variety of incidence angles. The entropy of Cloude, co-pol correlation coefficient, co-pol ratio, and the entropy of polarization increase with the incidence angle's increment to the experimental data. But the mean scattering angle and the co-pol phase difference have smaller variety range. From the experimental result, both the microwave band and incidence angle should be considered when we design the threshold of target detection and classification using polarimetric parameters. The ship-sea contrast study at the incidence angle of 46.7° shows that the co-pol correlation coefficient has the highest ship-sea contrast among the researched polarimetric parameters, especially the L band. Moreover, the effectiveness of ship detection based on polarimetric features has the relationship of L>P>C.