Effects of Faraday rotation on backscatter signatures in SAR image data

The effect of Faraday rotation on spaceborne polarimetric SAR measurements is addressed. Single-polarized, dual- polarized and quad-polarized backscatter measurements subject to Faraday rotation are modeled. It is shown that due to Faraday rotation, the received signal includes other polarization characteristics of the surface. Techniques are developed to detect the presence of Faraday rotation in dual-polarized and quad-polarized SAR data. Finally, a novel approach for the correction (or calibration) of linearly polarized fully polarimetric data for Faraday rotation, to recover the `true' scattering matrix, is presented.