A study of InSAR data processing for digital elevation model generation

Abstract

There is a well-known expression, 'A picture is worth a thousand words', which aptly represents imagery as a goldmine of information. Several Earth-Observation satellites, like the European Space Agency's Sentinel-1, COSMO/Skymed, and TerraSAR-X, use this aspect of imaging to conduct remote sensing for occurrences such as forest fires, hazardous landslides, and so on, in various regions of the world. Everything – from crop health monitoring to recognizing natural calamities such as volcano eruptions – can be accomplished remotely from a ground station by processing the image payload acquired by these Earth-Observation satellites.

Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) uses interferometric processing methods to build high-quality Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) from high-resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images. It can give continuous imagery no matter what the weather conditions are. DEMs are used in a wide range of Earth science applications, such as topographic mapping, surface deformation caused by earthquakes and ground water flows. It has been crucial to the advancement of Earth observation sciences, with InSAR technological advancements constantly improving and expanding in study disciplines. This report explores two methods for creating DEMs from SAR data using Single Look Complex (SLC) data utilising InSAR processing. The outcomes of applying the aforementioned processing algorithms to real-world satellite data collecting are also discussed.