ALOS-2/PALSAR-2 dual-polarized L-band data for sea ice parameter estimation and sea ice classification

This research is related to the JAXA 6th Research Announcement for the Advanced Land
Observing Satellite-2 (ALOS-2) project "Improved Sea Ice Parameter Estimation with L-Band SAR (ISIPELS)".
In the study ALOS-2/PALSAR-2 dual-polarized Horizontal-transmit-Horizontal-receive/
Horizontal-transmit-Vertical-receive (HH/HV) ScanSAR mode L-band  Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery
over an Arctic study area were evaluated for their suitability for operational sea ice monitoring.
The SAR data consisting of about 140 HH/HV ScanSAR ALOS-2/PALSAR-2 images were acquired during the winter 2017.
These L-band SAR data were studied for estimation of different sea ice parameters:
sea ice concentration, sea ice thickness, sea ice type, sea ice drift. Also some comparisons with nearly
coincident C-band data over the same study area have been made. The results indicate that L-band
SAR data from ALOS-2/PALSAR-2 are very useful for estimating the studied sea ice parameters and equally good
or better than using the conventional operational dual-polarized C-band SAR satellite data.