With the increasing of satellite sensors, more available multi-source data can be used for large-scale high-precision crop classification. Both polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) and multi-spectral optical data have been widely used for classification. However, it is difficult to combine the covariance matrix of PolSAR data with the spectral bands of optical data. Using Hoekman’s method, this study solves the above problems by transforming the covariance matrix to an intensity vector that includes multiple intensity values on different polarization basis. In order to reduce the features redundancy, the principal component analysis (PCA) algorithm is adopted to select some useful polarimetric and optical features. In this study, the PolSAR data acquired by satellite Gaofen-3 (GF-3) on 19 July 2017 and the optical data acquired by Sentinel-2A on 17 July 2017 over the Dongting lake basin are selected for the validation experiment. The results show that the full feature integration method proposed in this study achieves an overall classification accuracy of 85.27%, higher than that of the single dataset method or some other feature integration modes.

Time series of ground subsidence can not only be used to describe motion produced by various anthropocentric and natural process but also to better understand the processes and mechanisms of geohazards and to formulate effective protective measures. For high-accuracy measurement of small baseline subset interferometric synthetic aperture radar (SBAS-InSAR), atmospheric turbulence and decorrelation noise are regarded as random variables and cannot be accurately estimated by a deterministic model when large spatio-temporal variability presents itself. Various weighting methods have been proposed and improved continuously to reduce the effects of these two parts and provide uncertainty information of the estimated parameters, simultaneously. Network-based variance-covariance estimation (NVCE) and graph theory (GT) are the two main weighting methods which were developed on the basis of previous algorithms. However, the NVCE weighting method only focuses on the influence of atmospheric turbulence and neglects the decorrelation noise. The GT method weights each interferogram in a time series by using the Laplace transformation. Although simple to implement, it is not reasonable to have an equal weight for each pixel in the same interferogram. To avoid these limitations, this study presents a new weighting method by considering the physical characteristics of atmospheric turbulence and decorrelation noise in SBAS-InSAR images. The effectiveness of the proposed method was tested and validated by using a set of simulated experiments and a case study on a Hawaiian island. According to the GPS-derived displacements, the average RMSE of the results from the new weighting method was 1.66 cm, indicating about an 8% improvement compared with 1.79, 1.80 and 1.80 cm from the unweighted method, the NVCE method and the GT method, respectively.

The superpixel generation is a key step for object-based classification and change detection. For the time-series polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) superpixel generation, the traditional polarimetric similarity measure based on the joint covariance matrix has limitations in discriminating different time-series similarity sequences with different fluctuations. Besides, in the traditional time-series PolSAR superpixel generation methods, it is difficult to determine the tradeoff factor between polarimetric and spatial similarity. In this article, an adaptive time-series PolSAR superpixel generation method based on the simple local iterative clustering (SLIC) is proposed, named time-series polarimetric SAR (TSPol)-adaptive simple local iterative clustering (ASLIC). There are three main improvements. First, a novel time-series polarimetric similarity measure based on the root mean square (rms) is proposed. Multitemporal polarimetric statistical information is combined to describe the polarimetric proximity between pixels, referring to the rms of the multitemporal proximities. Second, an edge detection method based on the stacked 2-D Gaussian-shaped (s2-D GS) window is proposed to initialize the central seeds for superpixel generation. Third, an improved SLIC clustering similarity combined with the time-series polarimetric, time-series power, and spatial similarities is proposed. Meanwhile, a homogeneity factor is applied to adaptively balance the relative weights of various similarities. We use eight Radarsat-2 quad-polarization synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images and 14 Sentinel-1 dual-polarization SAR images to evaluate the effectiveness. The results show our similarity measure and superpixel generation results are superior to those of the traditional methods. For example, as for the Radarsat-2 data, the improvement of the boundary recall by the proposed similarity measure and homogeneity factor is about 4% and 10%, respectively.

A novel distributed scatterer interferometric synthetic aperture radar (DS-InSAR) method is presented in which the sum of Kronecker product (SKP) decomposition method is applied to DS candidates. Unlike existing polarimetric optimization methods, the proposed method considers polarimetric and interferometric coherence information simultaneously, resulting in separation of the polarimetric scattering process for each target and the maximum diversity for the corresponding phase center locations. Physical reliability of the phase optimization solution is thereby ensured. The performance of the novel method is evaluated using 30 quad-polarized C-band Radarsat-2 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images over Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii. The proposed method provides a higher density of measurement scatterer (MS) points and a higher quality of DS interferometric phase with a temporally stable phase center than single-polarization (HH) method and quad-polarization exhaustive search polarimetric optimization (ESPO) method. Thus, the proposed method shows good performance in phase quality improvement and point density increasement.

Distributed scatterers (DSs) are necessary to increase point density in multi-temporal InSAR (MT-InSAR) monitoring. The identification of homogeneous pixels (HPs) is the first and key step for DS processing to overcome the low signal-to-noise ratio condition. Since multi-polarization data are good at describing geometrical structures and dielectric properties of ground objects, they have been applied for HP identification. However, polarimetric information is not enough for identifying areas with similar ground objects but different deformation. We propose a novel DS preprocessing algorithm based on polarimetric interferometric homogeneous pixel (PIHP) identification. Firstly, a novel Polarimetric InSAR (PolInSAR) similarity that combines polarimetric intensity, interferometric coherence, and phase is proposed, which is readily available in multi-baseline and multi-polarization data and flexible by controlling weighting factors. Secondly, based on the binary partition tree (BPT) framework, object-orientated multi-scale PIHP identification is achieved, which is suitable for complex deformation scenes. Tested with simulated quad-polarization data, our method shows improvement in phase quality and point density, especially in the deformed areas, compared with the traditional HP identification method based on the polarimetric homogeneity (PolHom) test and the method with ground object type map. Tested with 30 quad-polarization Radarsat-2 images over Kilauea Volcano, the point density of our method is three times higher than that of the PolHom test in vegetation areas. Our method is proven to be more sensitive and mechanically more advanced to homogeneous pixels identification than the traditional ones, which is helpful for phase optimization, spatial enlargement of monitoring points, and stability of the MT-InSAR algorithm.

Decorrelated scenarios, such as vegetated areas, are influenced by multiple scattering mechanisms and temporal decorrelation, which introduce phase noise and coherence estimation bias, posing challenges for phase linking (PL). The eigenvalue decomposition (EVD) method, well-suited for multi-scattering environments, mitigates these issues by decomposing signals into orthogonal eigenvectors, thus reducing the impact of multi-scattering mix on PL. However, EVD's effectiveness relies on the assumption of polarimetric stationarity, which is often violated in low-coherence scenarios due to the dynamic nature of vegetation and meteorological factors. Multi-polarization SAR data can address this challenge by enabling quantitative assessment of polarimetric stationarity via likelihood statistics of time series polarimetric covariance matrices. To enhance EVD, we introduce the Time Series Polarimetric Scattering Consistency Contribution (TSCC) metric, which evaluates the contribution of each interferometric pair to overall scattering consistency. The TSCC metric, based on the ratio of local to global scattering consistency, identifies interferometric data that meet the polarimetric stationarity assumption. Based on the scattering amplitude variations, it offers an available data quality assessment in decorrelated regions. Replacing traditional coherence weights, the TSCC metric modifies EVD to prioritize temporally stable interferometric pairs, improving phase consistency with actual deformation signals. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms traditional methods, achieving a 15% improvement in point density for distributed scatterers (DSs) in evergreen forest areas and an 82% improvement in point number of positive posterior coherence difference compared to classical EVD.