Improvement Prospects of DTM Reconstruction from P-Band SAR Tomography Over Tropical Dense Forests

Abstract

This paper deals with the retrieval of Digital Terrain Model (DTM) from P-band SAR, with a specific focus on the Paracou study case acquired during the TropiSAR airborne campaign. A technique based on the sum of Kronecker product (SKP) decomposition is used to compute a SAR-derived DTM. An analysis of the differences between this estimate and the one obtained for airborne LIDAR acquisitions is proposed. Moreover, a multi-scale adaptive filtering method, using local regression and morphological image processing, is also proposed to improve the DTM. The post-processed DTM show an improvement of the estimation of ground topography.