Abstract. Bistatic polarimetric radars provide target properties which just one monostatic system can not reveal. Moreover, augmentation of monostatic systems through the provision of bistatic receive-only stations can be a cheap way to increase the amount of remote sensing data. However, bistatic scattering needs to be investigated in order to properly define target properties such as symmetries and invariance, especially regarding choices of polarization basis. In this paper we discuss how the geometric theory of polarization, in which the geometry of the Poincaré sphere is directly related to 3-D geometry of space rather than the 2-D geometry of the wavefront plane, can be used to reduce the ambiguities in the interpretation of data. We also show how in the coherent case a complex scalar invariant can be determined irrespective of the basis combinations.