Terrain radiometric calibration of airborne UAVSAR for forested area

Abstract

In the field of biomass estimation, terrain radiometric calibration of airborne polarimetric SAR data for forested areas is an urgent problem. Illuminated area correction of σ-naught could not completely remove terrain features. Inspired by Small and Shimada, this paper tested gamma-naught on one mountainous forested area using airborne Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar data and found it could remove most terrain features. However, a systematic increasing trend from far range to near range is found in airborne SAR cases. This paper made an attempt to use the relationship between distance to SAR sensor and γ-naught to calibrate γ-naught. Two quantitative evaluation methods are proposed. Experimental results demonstrate that variation of γ-naught can be constrained to a limited extent from near range to far range. Since this method is based on ground range images, it avoids complicated orthorectification. © 2012 Wuhan University.