FIG Peer Review Journal

Back

Digital Elevation Model Generation Using Ascending and Descending Multi-baseline ALOS/PALSAR Radar Images (4086)

Jung Hum Yu (Republic of Korea) and Linlin Ge (Australia)
Mr. Jung Hum Yu
PhD student
School of Surveying & Spatial Information Systems
University of New South Wales
School of SSIS, Faculty of Engineering
University of New South Wales
Sydney
2052
Australia
 
Corresponding author Mr. Jung Hum Yu (email: ru.eugene[at]gmail.com, tel.: + 61-2-9385-4201)
 

[ abstract ] [ paper ] [ handouts ]

Published on the web 2010-01-14
Received 2009-11-19 / Accepted 2010-01-14
This paper is one of selection of papers published for the FIG Congress 2010 in Sydney, Australia and has undergone the FIG Peer Review Process.

FIG Congress 2010
ISBN 978-87-90907-87-7 ISSN 2308-3441
http://www.fig.net/resources/proceedings/fig_proceedings/fig2010/index.htm

Abstract

Satellite remote sensing can be an efficient and cost-effective technology for acquiring up-to-date and relatively accurate land cover and topographic information. Radar interferometry is a remote sensing technique that can measure high resolution topographic profiles of the Earth’s surface. One of the most important applications of the Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technique is the extraction of three-dimensional information from radar images of the Earth’s surface. InSAR digital elevation model (DEM) generation relies on the measurement of phase difference between the two sets of complex radar signals, i.e. the range difference between the satellite-borne radar instrument and the ground targets reflecting the radar transmissions. In InSAR DEM generation, the so-called “master image” parameters, such as signal wavelength, incidence angle, and SAR image relationship (i.e. perpendicular baseline), affect the final DEM products. Furthermore, the orbit direction (ascending or descending) provides a different representation of terrain over the same target area. Hence, using images collected by the satellite sensor from different orbit directions is way of improving the quality of InSAR-generated DEMs. The authors propose a combination of two methods to improve DEM quality: firstly, DEM averaging based on the same orbit direction but multi-perpendicular baseline, and secondly, merging the DEMs generated from images collected from different orbit directions in the area of overlap between the radar images.
 
Keywords: Geoinformation/GI; Remote sensing; Access to land; Spatial planning; multi-pass InSAR

Back