A SCATTERING MECHANISM ANALYSIS MODEL FOR VESSELS IN POLARIMETRIC SAR IMAGES

Vessels are usually paid much attention to in polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) images. Analyzing the detailed polarimetric scattering mechanism of vessels can provide guidance for the subsequent feature extraction and target detection. In this paper, a scattering mechanism analysis model is proposed, which can be used to simulate PolSAR images of vessels under various observation conditions and to analyse the scattering mechanism. Based on the high frequency approximation techniques, ray tracing is applied to calculate the backscattering coefficients. Simulated echo signal and image can be obtained by convolving the backscattering coefficients with original echo signal of PolSAR system. Through this simulation analysis model, a lot of data acquisition costs can be saved, and the polarimetric scattering mechanism of vessels under any observation condition can be freely analysed. The experimental results show that the model can effectively obtain the simulated PolSAR image of vessel and be used to analyse the scattering mechanism, which provides help for the subsequent feature extraction and target detection.