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The classification of urban environments poses significant challenges for polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR), since rotated urban blocks violate the assumption of reflection symmetry held by many decomposition approaches. Vast sections of cities appear to be dominated by volume scattering due to the introduction of coherent depolarization. Attempts to model this slanted double bounce must contend with the fact that dihedrals rotated about the vertical axis do not support significant backscatter and require a rough ground surface to affect a return path. In this paper, the concept of an effective dihedral is introduced, with one plate coincident with the building wall and one plate associated with some ground facet, oriented so as to support double bounce. The rotation of this effective dihedral can be readily related to the polarization orientation angle and used to quantify co-pol and cross-pol phases. Theoretical results are confirmed with L-band and C-band polarimetric SAR imagery of San Francisco, as well as by broadband laboratory experiments with modeled buildings. In addition, the utility of using cross-pol phase to classify urban regions in the Los Angeles basin is demonstrated with ascending and descending dual-pol Radarsat data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Use of Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) laser altimetry is demonstrated for control of a digital elevation model (DEM) that is synthesized from repeat-pass ERS-1 and 2 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery using interferometric SAR (InSAR). Our study area is 15650 km2 of the Barrow, AK coastal plain adjacent to the Arctic Ocean; a vast expanse of tundra, lakes, and arctic wetlands of such low relief as to be nearly devoid of terrain features. The accuracy of the ICESat-derived elevation measurements is assessed by comparison with differential global positioning system (DGPS) data acquired along ICESat ground tracks. The ICESat-derived elevations have a mean accuracy, relative to the DGPS elevations, of -0.01 ± 0.18 m. ICESat-derived elevations on the Arctic coastal plain provide an excellent source for DEM control. We employ the ICESat-derived ground control points (GCPs) in two distinct InSAR processing steps: 1) selected points are used to perform baseline refinements, which improves the ERS-1 and 2 interferograms and 2) the ICESat-derived GCP position data (latitude, longitude, elevation) are then used as control in mosaicking multiple InSAR-derived DEMs. The resulting ICESat-controlled DEM has a mean accuracy of -1.11 ± 6.3 m relative to an independent standard, which is a commercial airborne InSAR-derived DEM having 0.5 m rms accuracy. This easily meets DTED-2 standards and suggests that DEMs derived using only ICESat altimetry for ground control would meet similar standards in other regions of low relief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]