Analysis of the Requirements for Tomographic SAR Acquisitions for 3-D Forest Structure Applications

Abstract:
Synthetic Aperture Radar Tomography (TomoSAR) is the unique remote sensing technique able to extract 3-D information over forests at global scale, with continuous coverage and independently of cloud coverage. However, the usual low number of acquisitions in TomoSAR limits its imaging capability to extract 3-D forest information. In this paper, different number and distributions of acquisitions are analyzed in terms of vertical resolution and peak-sidelobe level (PSL). Simulations of TomoSAR data supported by point cloud lidar for realistic scenarios are discussed in terms of vertical profiles. The results show that, for a limited number of tracks, a non-uniform distribution with higher vertical resolution and PSL is necessary to characterize different forest structure types.