Interferometric phase uncertainty estimation for decorrelating heterogeneous targets

Abstract:
Phase observations of decorrelating targets are subject to speckle noise. However, state-of-the art estimates of the associated uncertainties based on the Gaussian speckle model are biased low. We address two contributions to this bias: i) unreliable coherence estimates (by accounting for coherence uncertainties, adding constraints, and likelihood penalization) and ii) deviations from Gaussianity (by modeling scattering heterogeneities). The advances in i) greatly reduce the bias for diverse decorrelation characteristics, and they improve the phase history estimates. Accounting for heterogeneity ii) reflects the larger uncertainty with increased heterogeneity, but the differences are minor in our case studies.