Jo. Hagberg et Lmh. Ulander, ON THE OPTIMIZATION OF INTERFEROMETRIC SAR FOR TOPOGRAPHIC MAPPING, IEEE transactions on geoscience and remote sensing, 31(1), 1993, pp. 303-306
Spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) provides the possibility of
producing topographic maps and cartographically corrected radar images
using an interferometric method. The technique requires two SAR image
s of the same area gathered from slightly separated positions. The int
erferometric baseline may be optimized to minimize the topographic alt
itude error. This paper investigates the altitude error caused by the
radar system and by the topography, and simulates an interferometric m
easurement based on ERS-1 SAR parameters. It is found that the terrain
topography has a significant effect on the height error, which in man
y cases is more severe than baseline decorrelation.