A SCATTERING MECHANISM IN OYSTER FARM BY POLARIMETRIC AND JERS-l DATA

Tidal flats develop along the south coast ofthe Korean peninsula. These areas are famous for sea farming. Specially, strong and coherent radar backscattering signals are observed over oyster sea farms that consist of artificial structures. Tide height in oyster farm is possible to measure by using interferometric phase and intensity of SAR data. It is assumed that the radar signals from oyster farm could be considered as double-bouncing returns by vertical and horizontal bars. But, detailed backscattering mechanism and polarimetric characteristics in oyster farm had not been well studied. We could not demonstrate whether the assumption is correct or not and exactly understand what the properties of back scattering were in oyster farm without full polarimetric data. The results of AIRSAR L-band POLSAR data, experiments in laboratory and JERS-l images are discussed. We carried out an experiment simulating a target structure using vector network analyser (Y.N.A.) in an anechoic chamber at Niigata University. Radar returns from vertical poles are stronger than those from horizontal poles by 10.5 dB. Single bounce components were as strong as double bounce components and more sensitive to antenna look direction. Double bounce components show quasi-linear relation with height of vertical poles. As black absorber replaced AI-plate in bottom surface, double bounce in vertical pole decreased. It is observed that not all oyster farms are characterized by double bounced scattering in AIRSAR data. The image intensity of the double bounce dominant oyster farm was investigated with respect to that of oyster farm dominated by single bounce in JERS-l SAR data. The image intensity model results in a correlation coefficient (R2 ) of 0.78 in double bounce dominant area while that of 0.54 in single bouncing dominant area. This shows that double bounce dominant area should be selected for water height measurement using In8AR technique.