Incidence Angle

Incidence angle changes how radar energy interacts with the surface. The same field can show different backscatter at different incidence angles even if nothing on the ground changed.

Operational SAR products often include incidence angle metadata or apply normalization. If you build thresholds or train models, you should check whether angle effects are handled.

Angle sensitivity is one reason SAR time series often use consistent acquisition modes and careful preprocessing. Mixing different modes without normalization can produce unstable signals.