Accurate DEM Reconstruction from Permanent Scatterers and Multi-baseline Interferometry

The application of the Permanent Scatterers (PS) Technique in multi-temporal data-sets, namely the identification and exploitation of sparse coherent targets, has shown that it is possible to estimate and remove interferometric phase components due to atmospheric effects and orbital fringes. So far, the application of the PS technique has been focused on the extraction of the motion field of the area of interest. However, it is also known that PS relative elevations can be estimated with sub-meter precision while smooth errors can be removed using a coarse resolution DEM or the data of the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). In this paper, we describe a new approach combining the PS Technique and standard interferometry to improve the quality of lnSAR DEM's. ERS Tandem interferograms are exploited to increase the number of coherent pixels, while atmospheric effects are estimated and subtracted by means of the sparse PS grid. Prior information and PS elevation are used to reduce the probability of phase-unwrapping errors. Preliminary results are reported and the key-factors for its successful application (e.g. the number of Tandem acquisitions available, PS density) are discussed.