DEM reconstruction accuracy in multichannel SAR interferometry

Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) systems allow the estimation of the height profile of the Earth surface. When the height profile of the observed scene is characterized by high slopes or exhibits strong height discontinuities, the height reconstruction obtained from a single interferogram is ambiguous, since the solution of the estimation problem is not unique. To solve this ambiguity and restore the solution uniqueness, multiple interferograms, obtained with different baselines and/or with different frequencies, have to be used (multichannel InSAR). The height profile can then be estimated from multiple interferograms using maximum likelihood (ML) estimation techniques or by means of maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation techniques, which take into account the relation between adjacent pixels. In this paper, the height estimation accuracy achievable with a given multibaseline interferometric configuration and using the aforementioned estimation techniques in terms of CramerRao lower bound for the ML and of error lower bound for the MAP, is analyzed and discussed. It is shown that the MAP technique outperforms the ML one and that its attainable accuracy is not sensitive to the baselines choice, while mainly depends on the ground slopes. © 2006 IEEE.