Airborne X-band SAR tomography for forest volumes

Abstract

We evaluate the usefulness of X-band, airborne (helicopter) data for tomography over forestry regions and discuss the use of compressive sensing algorithms to aid X-band airborne tomography. This work examines if there is any information that can be gained from forest volumes when analysing forestry sites using X-band data. To do so, different forest scenarios were simulated and a fast SAR simulator was used to model airborne multipass SAR data, at X-band, with parameters based on Leonardo's PicoSAR instrument. Model simulations considered varying factors that affect the height determination when using tomography. The main parameters that are considered here are: motion errors of the platform, the spacing of the flight paths, the resolution of the SAR images and plant life being present under the canopy (an understory). It was found that residual motion errors from the airborne platform cause the largest error in the tomographic profile.