Experimental study for detecting vehicle in flooding urban area using quad-pol SAR data

In this paper, we examine polarimetric scattering features from a vehicle between buildings, to find out a useful polarimetric indicator for accurately detecting it under flooding condition by using polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) data. To acquire PolSAR data for a scaled vehicle model, polarimetric scattering measurement is carried out in anechoic chamber at Ku-band. The model considered is composed of a small conducting rectangular parallelepiped (vehicle) surrounded by dielectric ones (buildings). They are both set on a conducting plate (flood water surface). In the image analysis for the quad-pol SAR data acquired by the measurement, some polarimetric analysis methods are executed. It is confirmed from the results of the analyses that the phase difference of HH-VV co-pol ratio is useful to detect/identify the vehicle model not only in the lit region but also in the shadow region of the buildings valley.