Polarimetric Enhancement of Pixel Candidates Selection in Persistent Scatterers Interferometry

Inhalt:
This work is aimed to present a general method for using the polarimetric information provided by new satellite SAR sensors in order to improve the performance of persistent scatterers interferometry (PSI). PSI methods select for processing only those pixels that are considered as a priori reliable under certain stability criterion. The method proposed in this paper aims to increase the number of pixel candidates by means of exploitation of polarimetric information. The approach has been formulated for two different criteria of selection: the average coherence over the stack of interferograms, and the amplitude dispersion index of the stack of images. First experimental results obtained with dual-pol images acquired by TerraSAR-X over the metropolitan area of Murcia (Spain) have confirmed the expected improvement.