Analyzing the spatial distribution of coherent points in SAR interferograms

The distribution of coherent targets takes a key role in the assessment of the performance and the evaluation of the processing results of multi-temporal Synthetic Aperture Radar interferometry (InSAR) approaches. In previous studies, the evaluation of the spatial distribution of coherent targets was largely based on rather simple parameters such as the spatial point density. While these parameters provide information on the total number of coherent points in an area, they are often insufficient to fully describe their spatial distribution. Hence, with this paper, new descriptors are introduced that better characterize the spatial distribution of coherent targets in an interferogram and serves as a better indicator of InSAR performance. A quantitative study is established both via simulated and real SAR data and the performance of the new parameters are discussed to demonstrate the capability of the developed parameters in describing the spatial distribution of coherent targets.