A quality assessment method based on common distributed targets for GF-3 polarimetric SAR data

Abstract

The GaoFen-3 (GF-3) satellite, launched on 10 August 2016, is the first C-band polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) satellite in China. The PolSAR system of GF-3 can collect a significant wealth of information for geophysical research and applications. Being used for related applications, GF-3 PolSAR images must be of good quality. It is necessary to evaluate the quality of polarimetric data and achieve the normalized quality monitoring during 8-year designed life of GF-3. In this study, a new quality assessment method of PolSAR data based on common distributed targets is proposed, and the performance of the method is analyzed by simulations and GF-3 experiments. We evaluate the quality of GF-3 PolSAR data by this method. Results suggest that GF-3 antenna is highly isolated, and the quality of calibrated data satisfies the requests of quantitative applications.