Analysis of impacting factors on polarimetric SAR oil spill detection

Polarimetric synthetic aperture radar(SAR) oil spill detection parameters conformity coefficient(μ), Muller matrix parameters(|C|, B0), the eigenvalues of simplified coherency matrix(λnos) and the influence of SAR observing parameters, ocean environment and noise level are investigated. Radarsat-2 data are used to make systematic analysis of polarimetric parameters for different incidences, wind speeds, noise levels and the ocean phenomena(oil slick and look likes). The influence of the SAR observing parameters, the ocean environment and the noise level on the typical polarimetric SAR parameter conformity coefficient has been analyzed. The results indicate that conformity coefficient cannot be simply used for oil spill detection, which represents the image signal to the noise level to some extent. When the signals are below the noise level for the oil slick and the look likes, the conformity coefficients are negative; while the signals above the noise level corresponds to positive conformity coefficients. For dark patches(low wind and biogenic slick) with the signal below the noise,polarization features such as conformity coefficient cannot separate them with oil slick. For the signal above the noise, the oil slick, the look likes(low wind and biogenic slick) and clean sea all have positive conformity coefficients, among which, the oil slick has the smallest conformity coefficient, the look likes the second, and the clean sea the largest value. For polarimetric SAR data oil spill detection, the noise plays a significant role. So the polarimetric SAR data oil spill detection should be carried out on the basis of noise consideration.