Digital elevation model generation using ascending and descending multi-baseline ALOS/PALSAR radar images
Yu, Jung Hum & Linlin Ge
Satellite remote sensing can be an efficient and cost-effective technology for acquiring upto- date and relatively accurate land cover and topographic information. Radar interferometry is a remote sensing technique that can measure high resolution topographic profiles of the Earthhs surface. One of the most important applications of the Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technique is the extraction of three-dimensional information from radar images of the Earthhs surface. InSAR digital elevation model (DEM) generation relies on the measurement of phase difference between the two sets of complex radar signals, i.e. the range difference between the satellite-borne radar instrument and the ground targets reflecting the radar transmissions. In InSAR DEM generation, the so-called master imagee parameters, such as signal wavelength, incidence angle, and SAR image relationship (i.e. perpendicular baseline), affect the final DEM products. Furthermore, the orbit direction (ascending or descending) provides a different representation of terrain over the same target area. Hence, using images collected by the satellite sensor from different orbit directions is way of improving the quality of InSAR-generated DEMs. The authors propose a combination of two methods to improve DEM quality: firstly, DEM averaging based on the same orbit direction but multi-perpendicular baseline, and secondly, merging the DEMs generated from images collected from different orbit directions in the area of overlap between the radar images.
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