Preliminary Result of ALOS/PALSAR Fully Polarimetric Data and its Comparison with Pi-SAR Data

The Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) was successfully launched on Jan. 24, 2006, from Tanegashima Space Center, Japan. The objectives of ALOS are [1]: (1) to provide maps for Japan and other countries including Asia-Pacific region (Cartography), (2) to perform regional observation for "sustainable development", harmonization between Earth environment and development (Regional Observation) , (3) to conduct disaster monitoring around the world (Disaster Monitoring), (4) to survey natural resources (Resources Surveying), (5) to develop technology necessary for future Earth observing satellite (Technology Development) . It enhances land observation technologies acquired through the development and operation of its predecessors, the Japanese Earth Resource Satellite-1 (JERS-1) and the Advanced Earth Observing Satellite (ADEOS). ALOS is one of the largest earth observing satellites ever developed. In this paper, a preliminary result of the fully polarimetric data is presented. The fully polarimetric data from space-borne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is the first one in the world. Using the four-component decomposition algorithm [2] based on the coherency matrix, the polarimetric data are decomposed and are compared with Pi-SAR (an airborne SAR) data set. Fig. 1 shows ALOS in space. Fig. 2 shows the operation mode of PALSAR.