Using U-Net for signal preprocessing in interferometric synthetic aperture radar

Abstract

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) interferometry is an active remote sensing technology that uses microwaves to characterize the earth's surface. SAR interferometry allows to measure the 3D profile of the earth's surface, recover surface topography, and determine topographic displacements over time. The microwave SAR signal is usually highly distorted. Distortions can be caused by, for example, atmospheric disturbances and various characteristics of earth's surface scatterers reflectance. Compensation for these distortions is performed by filtering the phase and evaluating the degree of coherence of the original images. This is an important step to improve the accuracy of the subsequent pphase-unwrapping operation. In this paper, we investigate the use of U-net neural networks for preprocessing the SAR interferogram at various parameters of the distortion of the SAR signal. Two neural networks filter the SAR interferogram and determine the degree of coherence, respectively.