Rapid Surface Large-Change Monitoring by Repeat-Pass GEO SAR Multibaseline Interferometry

Abstract

Fast observations of rapid surface large-changes are demanded in disaster evaluations and scientific studies. Digital elevation model (DEM) differencing before and after the events is an effective way to retrieve the changes. Owing to a short repeat cycle, geosynchronous synthetic aperture radar (GEO SAR) systems can quickly obtain repeat-pass data and generate postevent DEMs by interferometry. However, interferometric baselines under its quick revisit cases are short, resulting in generating low-accuracy postevent DEMs. Moreover, surface large-changes can bring height ambiguity problems under the single-baseline interferometric processing. In this letter, we address the problem through a multibaseline (MB) processing. Since GEO SAR MB data can derive from the repeat-pass interferometric data of different subapertures and revisits, a subaperture-decomposition-based temporal and spatial MB method is proposed. The simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, where the quickly generated postevent DEM can help to realize the rapid large-elevation change observations.