Process for combining multiple passes of interferometric SAR data
AssigneeSandia Corporation
InventorsDouglas L. Bickel, David A. Yocky, William H. Hensley, Jr.
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Abstract
Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (IFSAR) is a promising technology for a wide variety of military and civilian elevation modeling requirements. IFSAR extends traditional two dimensional SAR processing to three dimensions by utilizing the phase difference between two SAR images taken from different elevation positions to determine an angle of arrival for each pixel in the scene. This angle, together with the two-dimensional location information in the traditional SAR image, can be transformed into geographic coordinates if the position and motion parameters of the antennas are known accurately.
Claims12
A method for determining the height of objects in an area utilizing IFSAR data comprising:
- collecting IFSAR coherence and height data on the area from at least two passes of the IFSAR system,
- forming an ortho-rectangular map of the area from the collected data, the height information for each portion of the map being derived only from the data of the single pass having the highest coherence at that portion.
A method of determining the height of objects in an area utilizing slant range IFSAR data comprising:
- dividing the area into a plurality of portions;
- collecting IFSAR data on each portion from multiple passes of an IFSAR system along at least two sides of the area, the data for each pass providing an indication of a vertical component of any object facing the IFSAR system in each portion of the area, the indication of variation in height being a function of the coherence of the data;
- and
- for each portion of the area, utilizing only the IFSAR data of the pass which has the least variation of height in that portion to determine the height of an object in that portion.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.