Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) processing techniques have gradually become a powerful tool for earth observation. The ubiquitous problem of noise filtering represents also a challenge in the SAR signal processing field. In case of the analysis of land regions, the identification of a general algorithm, suitable for the large-scale processing, represents an additional challenge, due to the diversity of the areas’ characteristics. More specifically, two main classes of scattering mechanisms can be defined: Persistent Scatterers (PS), coherent, point-wise targets, and Distributed Scatterers (DS), mechanisms with moderate coherence, whose contribution spreads across multiple pixels of the images. Due to their different characteristics, the joint processing of PS and DS was difficult to address, until the development of the SqueeSAR algorithm. This method, based on the joint processing of statistical homogeneous pixels, was successfully implemented in the field of SAR Interferometry, which exploits solely the phase of the focused acquisitions. The objective of this work is to evaluate the applicability of the SqueeSAR principle in the frame of SAR Tomography, a multitemporal SAR processing technique which also has the ability to separate interfering scattering mechanisms.
Multidimensional Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging is a technique based on coherent SAR data combi- nation for space (full 3-D) and space deformation-velocity (4-D) analysis. It extends SAR interferometry and differential interferometry concepts offering new options for the analysis and monitoring of ground scenes. In this paper, we consider the problem of detecting scatterers showing partial correlation properties induced by simulta- neous acquisitions from satellite formations or an uneven temporal distribution of satellite constellations. To this end, we design a decision rule accounting for the presence of partial coherent scatterers. At the analysis stage, we assess the performance of the new detector also in comparison with a previously proposed scheme, developed in the context of SAR tomography for fully coherent scatterers.
KEYWORDS: Chromium, Interferometric synthetic aperture radar, Synthetic aperture radar, Error analysis, X band, Interferometry, Data acquisition, Stanford Linear Collider, Remote sensing, Global Positioning System
Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (InSAR) is a technique for the generation of Digital Elevation Models (DEMs)
of an observed scene. It exploits the phase difference (interferogram) of two SAR images relevant to the same area and
acquired by two different look angles.
To recover the topographic information from an InSAR data pair, it is necessary to evaluate a proper phase offset value
to add to the unwrapped SAR interferogram. Generally, such a phase offset is accurately estimated by using Corner
Reflectors (CRs) properly deployed over the illuminated area. Nevertheless, in some cases of practical interest, CRs
cannot be used: in order to overcome this limit, different algorithms have been proposed in literature. In this paper, we
present an algorithm aimed at estimating the InSAR phase-offset without using CRs. To this aim, we first present a
theoretical analysis, validated by experiments carried out on simulated data, for the evaluation of the phase offset and,
thereafter, we apply the proposed method on real data acquired by the X-band airborne OrbiSAR system. Comparisons
with results achieved by using CRs properly deployed over the test site are also included.
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