Abstract
This article addresses the general problem of single-look multi-master SAR tomography. For this purpose, we establish the single-look multi-master data model, analyze its implications for the single and double scatterers, and propose a generic inversion framework. The core of this framework is the nonconvex sparse recovery, for which we develop two algorithms: one extends the conventional nonlinear least squares (NLS) to the single-look multi-master data model and the other is based on bi-convex relaxation and alternating minimization (BiCRAM). We provide two theorems for the objective function of the NLS subproblem, which lead to its analytic solution up to a constant phase angle in the 1-D case. We also report our findings from the experiments on different acceleration techniques for BiCRAM. The proposed algorithms are applied to a real TerraSAR-X data set and validated with the height ground truth made available by an SAR imaging geodesy and simulation framework. This shows empirically that the single-master approach, if applied to a single-look multi-master stack, can be insufficient for layover separation, and the multi-master approach can indeed perform slightly better (despite being computationally more expensive) even in the case of single scatterers. In addition, this article also sheds light on the special case of single-look bistatic SAR tomography, which is relevant for the current and future SAR missions such as TanDEM-X and Tandem-L.
Highlights
S YNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR (SAR) tomography is an interferometric SAR (InSAR) technique that reconstructs a 3-D far field from the 2-D azimuth-rangeManuscript received November 1, 2019; revised March 9, 2020 and May 2, 2020; accepted June 6, 2020
SAR tomography is sometimes considered as an extension of persistent scatterer interferometry (PSI) [7]–[9] to the multiscatterer case, the inversion of the latter is performed on the double-difference phase observations of the persistent scatterers (PS) [10]
We focus on the case in which the far field contains only a small number of scatterers such that gn ≈ γl exp(− j knsl ), n = 1, . . . , N
Summary
S YNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR (SAR) tomography is an interferometric SAR (InSAR) technique that reconstructs a 3-D far field from the 2-D azimuth-range. This article, on the other hand, addresses the general problem of SAR tomography using a single-look multi-master stack Such a stack arises when, for example: 1) a stack of bistatic interferograms is used in order to diminish the APS, to minimize the temporal decorrelation of the nonPSs, and to eliminate the motion-induced phase of the single scatterers [33], [43], [44] and 2) the repeat-pass interferograms of small (temporal) baselines are employed so as to limit the corresponding decorrelation effects of the non-PSs [45]–[47].
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