Adaptive Multilooking of Multitemporal Differential SAR Interferometric Data Stack Using Directional Statistics

Abstract

In this article, we present an innovative space–time adaptive multilooking technique that operates on a sequence of multitemporal, differential synthetic aperture radar interferograms. The developed approach relies on the application of the fundamentals of directional statistics theory. At variance with other methods that identify the set of statistically homogenous pixels (SHPs) within a multilooking (complex averaging) window based on the statistics of the single-look-complex (SLC) SAR images, the proposed method is exclusively based on the analysis of the multitemporal sequence of full resolution DInSAR interferograms. The SHPs are then used to generate spatially adaptive multilooked interferograms both at the native, full-scale grid of the SLC images and at the multilooked resolution scale. The algorithm is effective and simple to implement, only requiring the availability of a sequence of full-scale differential SAR interferometry (DInSAR) interferograms. The interferograms can then be used to generate ground displacement time-series through advanced multitemporal interferometric SAR (MTInSAR) approaches. Experimental results obtained by applying the adopted technique to two SAR data sets acquired at X- and L-band, respectively, demonstrate the validity of the developed method.