Group Sparsity in SAR Tomography – Experiments on TanDEM-X Data Stacks

Abstract

With meter-resolution images delivered by modern SAR satellites like TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X, it is now possible to map urban areas from space in very high level of detail using advanced interferometric techniques such as PSI and (SAR Tomography) TomoSAR, whereas these multi-pass interferometric techniques are based on a great number of images. We are aiming at improving the estimation accuracy of TomoSAR while reducing the required number of images. In the paper, we propose a novel workflow that marries the freely available 2D building footprint GIS data and the group sparsity concept for TomoSAR inversion. Experiments on bistatic TanDEM-X data stacks demonstrate the great potential of the proposed approach.