Oil Spill Analysis Using Hybrid-Polarization Synthetic Aperture Radar

Abstract

The goal for this thesis is to test various Hybrid-Polarization (HP) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) parameters using actual HP data, and to evaluate the validity of these parameters with respect to oil slick detection. As part of the evaluation, the impact of the system noise and incidence angle on the SAR images is discussed. It is shown that the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of the sensor has a large impact on the HP mode, and that the Stokes parameters is effective for enhancing the observed features in SAR imagery. The ellipticity parameter is shown to be a parameter which should be treated with caution until more knowledge about how it responds to the noise and incidence angles, while the best parameter for oil spill detection was for the evaluated scenes found to be the first Stokes parameter. In all, the HP mode is found to be a valid mode for oil spill detection, even with low SNR as was the case for the evaluated scenes. However, it is not possible to differ between different types of oil, and/or lookalikes in the scenes that is evaluated in this thesis.