Ballester-Berman, J. David, Vicente-Guijalba, Fernando, Lopez-Sanchez, Juan M. A Simple RVoG Test for PolInSAR Data IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing. 2015, 8(3): 1028-1040. doi:10.1109/JSTARS.2014.2379438 URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10045/46276 DOI: 10.1109/JSTARS.2014.2379438 ISSN: 1939-1404 (Print) Abstract: In this paper, we present a simple algorithm for assessing the validity of the RVoG model for PolInSAR-based inversion techniques. This approach makes use of two important features characterizing a homogeneous random volume over a ground surface, i.e., the independence on polarization states of wave propagation through the volume and the structure of the polarimetric interferometric coherency matrix. These two features have led to two different methods proposed in the literature for retrieving the topographic phase within natural covers, i.e., the well-known line fitting procedure and the observation of the (1, 2) element of the polarimetric interferometric coherency matrix. We show that differences between outputs from both approaches can be interpreted in terms of the PolInSAR modeling based on the Freeman-Durden concept, and this leads to the definition of a RVoG/non-RVoG test. The algorithm is tested with both indoor and airborne data over agricultural and tropical forest areas. Keywords:Parameter inversion, PolInSAR, RVoG model, Vegetation IEEE info:eu-repo/semantics/article