Detection of Distributed Scatterers in Multitemporal SAR Interferometry: A Comparison Between CAESAR and SqueeSAR Detectors

Synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) with multiple passes is widely used to monitor deformations of the Earth surface. SqueeSAR and Component extrAction and sElection SAR (CAESAR) are two recently proposed solutions for performing an effective multiacquisition multilook-based filtering of interferograms to contrast the effects of phase noise for weak and/or decorrelating scatterers (DSs). Both methods can be used specifically at the detection stage in InSAR processing chains characterized by a two-stage/two-scale processing strategy, to increase the coverage of monitored points. In this work, we compare the detection performances of the SqueeSAR-based and CAESAR-based detectors. We address the evaluation of the performances on simulated data in the classical Gaussian scenario. Results of experiments on data acquired by the TerraSAR-X (TSX) and COSMO-SkyMed (CSK) sensors are also included to discuss the advantages of one method over the other in real scenarios.