Polarimetry and Permittivity in SAR Remote Sensing

It is well known in SAR imagery that the materials of the objects illuminated by a transmitter have a substantial impact on the signal collected by the receiver. It is also widely admitted that this effect depends on the polarization of both emitted and received electromagnetic fields. However, this impact has been poorly investigated, probably because of the lack of ground truth information. We propose in this article to summarize our recent findings on how the materials affect the radar response and how we can use this, both for better understanding the radar phenomenology and for permittivity retrieval.