DTM generation from 35-day repeat pass ERS-1 interferometry

Abstract

This paper presents the authors' experience in synthetic aperture radar interferometry with ERS-1 data of the region around Canberra, Australia. Single look complex (SLC) images were generated by both the traditional range-Doppler method with range migration correction, and the chirp scaling method. The interferograms obtained showed large regions of severe noise probably due to the temporal decorrelation of the ERS-1 images which were taken 35 days apart. The temporal decorrelation also affected the image registration process. Amplitude correlation technique was found to be more effective than the commonly used complex correlation and phase fluctuation techniques for registration of these images. An adaptive algorithm that takes into consideration the terrain slope and the quality of interferometric phases has been developed for smoothing the phase images.