Improvement Prospects of DTM Reconstruction from P-Band SAR Tomography Over Tropical Dense Forests

Smessaert, Mael; Villard, Ludovic; Praly, Laurent; Daniel, Sandrine; Ferro-Famil, Laurent

doi:10.1109/igarss47720.2021.9553623

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…As shown in Section 3.2, these high values of slope error are due to artifacts produced by the application of a 17 × 17 boxcar filter during the tomographic covariance matrix estimation step. The use of smoother filters, with a Gaussian impulse response, for instance, would mitigate this effect [83]. A small region free from this artifact has a higher slope accuracy, i.e., an average slope and standard deviation of about 2 • .…”

Section: Elevation and Slope Errorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multicriteria Accuracy Assessment of Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) Produced by Airborne P-Band Polarimetric SAR Tomography in Tropical Rainforests

et al. 2022

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The penetration capability of P-band radar waves through dense vegetation, along with the ability of tomography to separate the contributions of different layers in a vertical reflectivity profile, make P-band radar tomography a promising tool for digital terrain modeling in forested areas, specifically in dense tropical forests under which terrain topography remains poorly known. This paper aims to assess the overall quality of a digital terrain model (DTM) produced using tomographic processing of airborne P-band SAR imagery acquired during the TropiSAR campaign in French Guiana. Many quality descriptors are used to evaluate the quality of this DTM. Position and slope accuracies are computed based on a lidar DTM considered as the reference, and the impact of several parameters on these accuracies is studied, namely, slope, slope orientation, off-nadir angle and local incidence angle. The realism of the landforms is also studied according to geomorphological criteria. The results of this multicriteria accuracy assessment show the high potential of P-band SAR tomography in depicting the topography under forests, despite the intrinsic limitations related to the slant range geometry: the absolute elevation error is around 2 m; the slope is overestimated with an error of about 16°, mainly due to a processing artifact for which easy and direct solutions exist. Indeed, this error is equal to about 3° in flat artifact-free areas. These errors vary depending on the acquisition parameters and the local topography. The shapes are globally well preserved. These results are also discussed in the frame of the upcoming BIOMASS mission developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and expected to be launched in 2024.

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Section: Elevation and Slope Errorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multicriteria Accuracy Assessment of Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) Produced by Airborne P-Band Polarimetric SAR Tomography in Tropical Rainforests

et al. 2022

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“…Indeed, the calculation of a topographic point aims to locate the interaction of a wave with the illuminated surface (terrain or canopy), and this is generally done without considering the result obtained for its neighbors. Constraining the computation of each individual point by imposing conditions of realism taking into account the neighboring points can improve the algorithms of interferometry and tomography in the case of long wavelength radar (Smessaert et al 2021). These constraints can even be injected more upstream to optimize the choice of processing parameters, for instance to adjust the size of the matching template depending on land cover in the photogrammetric processing chain (El Hage 2012), so that several neighboring points are determined together using criteria related to slope, roughness or other geomorphometric attributes.…”

Section: Potential Of Geomorphologic Knowledge Injection In the Eleva...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital elevation modeling through forests: the challenge of the Amazon

et al. 2022

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Elevation mapping at ground level is challenging in forested areas like the Amazon region, which is mostly covered by dense rainforest. The most common techniques, i.e. photogrammetry and short wavelength radar, provide elevations at canopy level at best, while most applications require ground elevations. Even lidar and P-band radar, which can penetrate foliage and measure elevations at ground level, have some limitations which are analyzed in here. We address three research questions: To what extent can a terrain model be replaced by a more easily available canopy-level surface model for topography-based applications? How can the elevation be obtained at ground level through forest? Can a priori knowledge of general continental relief properties be used to compensate for the limits of measurement methods in the presence of forest?

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Separation of Ground and Volume Scattering in Multibaseline Polarimetric SAR Data and Its Application in DTM and CHM Inversion

Zeng,

Xu,

Wang

et al. 2024

IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sensing

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Improvement Prospects of DTM Reconstruction from P-Band SAR Tomography Over Tropical Dense Forests

Cited by 3 publications

References 8 publications

Multicriteria Accuracy Assessment of Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) Produced by Airborne P-Band Polarimetric SAR Tomography in Tropical Rainforests

Multicriteria Accuracy Assessment of Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) Produced by Airborne P-Band Polarimetric SAR Tomography in Tropical Rainforests

Digital elevation modeling through forests: the challenge of the Amazon

Separation of Ground and Volume Scattering in Multibaseline Polarimetric SAR Data and Its Application in DTM and CHM Inversion

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