Detection of Double Scatterers in SAR Tomography

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) tomography is a technique that extends the concept of SAR interferometry for the accurate localization and monitoring of ground scatterers. Data that are being acquired by the new high resolution SAR sensors offer new perspectives in the 3-D reconstruction and monitoring of urban areas and, particularly, of individual buildings. SAR tomography allows increasing the density of measurements by handling situations where multiple stable scatterers interfere in the same resolution cell. The detection of reliable, i.e., persistent, scatterers is however a challenging issue. In this paper, we investigate three detection approaches: The first is based on a modification of information theoretical criteria; the last two are based on the generalized likelihood ratio test. Theoretical performances are analyzed in details on simulated data, and results of the application to real data from both medium and very high resolution sensors are also provided.