A novel approach to polarimetric SAR data processing based on Nonlinear PCA

Giorgio Licciardi, Ruggero Giuseppe Avezzano, Fabio Del Frate, Giovanni Schiavon, Jocelyn Chanussot

Abstract: Highlights•Nonlinear PCA (NLPCA) applied to full polarimetric SAR images.•NLPCA decomposes the original SAR data into five nonlinear components.•The five nonlinear components can be associated to five main scattering mechanisms.•Results are similar to those obtained with widely used decomposition techniques.•NLPCA outperform classical linear transformation approaches.