ADVANCED POLARIMETRIC SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR (SAR) AND ELECTRO-OPTICAL (EO) DATA FUSION THROUGH UNIFIED COHERENT FORMULATION OF THE SCATTERED EM FIELD

Exploitation of the backscattered field polarization over the wide electromagnetic spectrum, from visible to microwave frequencies, provides an approach to advanced target recognition in remote sensing applications. The framework for full coherent characterization of the scattered field that is established here, maximizes the extracted target information. It is also shown that such a methodology, which is theoretically similar to the concept of “partial or compact polarimetry”, yields comparable results to full or quadrature-polarized systems by incorporating judicious assumptions and assuming/implementing optimal transmitted or illumination field polarizations. On this basis, common characteristic features, interworking and fusion of different polarimetric sensor products in different regions of spectrum, e.g., radar/SAR and Electro-Optical, are investigated and formulated within a robust framework based on full coherent treatment of the scattered field.