Sar Tomography: An Advanced Tool For 4D Spaceborne Radar Scanning With Application To Imaging and Monitoring of Cities and Single Buildings
Sar Tomography: An Advanced Tool For 4D Spaceborne Radar Scanning With Application To Imaging and Monitoring of Cities and Single Buildings
Sar Tomography: An Advanced Tool For 4D Spaceborne Radar Scanning With Application To Imaging and Monitoring of Cities and Single Buildings
(a) (b)
Figure 5. Double scatterer density for SVD-Wiener (a) and SL1MMER (b) reconstruction (Blue: Null scatterers per pixel; Green: Single;
Red: Double) [24]. The superresolution capability of SL1MMER leads to more detected double scatterers, in particular at the lower parts
of the facades.
however, is often nonlinear (periodic, accelerating, stepwise, and casino (see Figure 4). Figure 8(a) shows in the native ra-
etc.). Conventional D-TomoSAR has been extended to esti- dar geometry (range and azimuth are the horizontal and verti-
mate multicomponent nonlinear motion in [9] by proposing cal directions, respectively), the topography retrieved by the
the generalized ”time warp” method. It rewrites the MDI Beam-Forming imaging approach by using only single
D-TomoSAR system model to an M+1-dimensional standard scatterers. Figure 8(b) and 8(c) show the estimated topogra-
spectral estimation problem, where M indicates the user phy and thermal dilation with single and double scatterers by
defined motion model order and, hence, enables the motion using the 5D Beam-Forming imaging: note that thermal dila-
estimation for all possible complex motion models. tion mostly affects the outer parts of building and exhibits dif-
Figure 7 shows an example of multicomponent motion esti- ferent behavior on the same building according to the different
mation. Since July 2009, the selected area over Las Vegas (see projection of thermal dilation along the radar line-of-sight.
Figure 7a) is undergoing a pronounced subsidence centered
at the convention center. Together with the thermal dilation
induced seasonal motion of the metallic building structure, the 4. Conclusion and Further Developments
selected area is characterized by a two-component nonlinear With reference to the current status of VHR tomographic
motion. Here, we choose the motion basis function as a sine SAR inversion presented in this article, the following conclu-
function with a period of one year for seasonal motion and sions can be drawn:
linear function for linear subsidence. And hence the motion • VHR tomographic SAR inversion is able to reconstruct
parameters to be estimated are amplitude of seasonal motion the shape and motion of individual buildings and entire
and linear deformation velocity. The final estimation results city areas.
of the generalized time-warp method are presented in Figure • Super-resolution is crucial and possible for VHR tomo-
7 including elevation estimates in meter (b), amplitude of sea- graphic SAR inversion for urban infrastructure.
sonal motion in millimeter (c) and the LOS linear deformation • TomoSAR reconstruction from multiple tracks enables
velocity in millimeter/year (d). us to reconstruct the complete structure of individual
If we know the temperature at the time of data acquisitions, buildings and to generate 3D point clouds of the illumi-
we can also accordingly choose the temperature as the basis nated area with a point density comparable to LiDAR
function to model thermal dilation induced deformation [10] • The motion or deformation of buildings is often nonlin-
[30][31]. In this case, the thermal coefficient is estimated that ear (periodic, accelerating, stepwise, etc.). This is par-
represents the strength of undergoing thermal dilation induced ticularly true with VHR SAR data. Multicomponent
deformation. An example is presented in Figure 8. The site nonlinear motion of multiple scatterers can be separated
under investigation is relevant to the area of the Bellagio hotel and further estimated by tomographic reconstruction.
80
60
40
20
–20
–40
(a) (b)
15
0
10
–5
5
–10
0 –15
–5 –20
–10 –25
–15 –30
(c) (d)
Figure 7. TomoSAR estimates of the selected area in Las Vegas: TerraSAR-X intensity map (a); Elevation estimates (b; unit: m) amplitude of
seasonal motion (c; unit: mm) and linear deformation velocity (d; unit: mm/y) [9].
A few topics for further study are outlined which mainly acquire data pairs simultaneously and repeatedly in
concern 1) tomographic SAR reconstruction from mixed sin- time. The TanDEM-X data pairs are free of motion,
gle-pass/multipass data stacks 2) object reconstruction from atmosphere and temporal decorrelation and, hence,
TomoSAR point clouds. possess much higher data quality. The fusion of
• Tomographic SAR reconstruction from mixed single- TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X data, i.e. adding a cou-
pass/repeat-pass data stacks: ple of TanDEM-X acquisition pairs to the TerraSAR-X
So far, the data used for spaceborne VHR tomograph- data stacks, can be used to improve the result of
ic SAR inversion are repeat-pass data stacks. With tomographic SAR inversion on the one hand, and to
TanDEM-X, for the first time there is a real multi- explore the limits of tomographic reconstruction on
antenna array system in space. It enables us to the other hand [39].
Figure 8. Thermal dilation analysis with TerraSAR-X data. (a) estimated topography with the 4D imaging (single scatterers); (b) esti-
mated topography with the 5D imaging (single and double); (c) estimated thermal coefficients with the 5D imaging (single and double)
[10][30][31].
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