Dynamic monitoring of the Earth's surface through colored video formation utilizing the polarization feature of synthetic aperture radar data

Articles in Press

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Fiber Optics group, Institute of Science and High Technology and Environmental Sciences, Graduate University of Advanced Technology, Kerman, Iran

2 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Graduate University of Advanced Technology, Kerman, Iran

10.22034/jasp.2025.66482.1270

Abstract

One of the distinctive properties of the electromagnetic waves employed in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is their polarization. During the scattering process, the polarization characteristics of the incident and reflected waves can reveal specific geometric and physical properties of objects. Polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) exploits this property for enhanced scene interpretation. This study introduces a novel approach for processing SAR data and generating false-color video by leveraging wave polarization information. In the proposed method, real SAR data in three polarization channels are first processed using the Polar Format Algorithm (PFA) to form three separate images of the scene. A color image is then produced through color assignment based on various scattering matrix decomposition techniques. To achieve suitable brightness and contrast levels, gamma correction and Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE) are applied. Subsequently, by combining sequential overlapping color images, a false-color video is generated to monitor the scene. The resulting video, along with color variations in objects and regions, reflects temporal physical or geometric changes in the scatterers. This integrated approach provides a powerful tool for SAR data analysis and can be applied to diverse fields such as urban monitoring, environmental studies, and agriculture. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated through real SAR data, showcasing its capability in producing color images and videos and their temporal variations under varying incidence angles, as well as enhancing the visual quality of the final imagery and video products by increasing the ENL about 30dB

Keywords

Main Subjects

Advanced Signal Processing

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 06 September 2025

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics