Road Surface Roughness Assessment: A Spaceborne SAR-Based Approach

Abstract:
Road surface roughness has a strong influence on vehicle skid resistance and road safety, requiring periodic assessment to perform maintenance activities. This study introduces a novel method for large-scale road surface roughness estimation using high-resolution X-band SAR data from Germany's TerraSAR-X satellite. The method accommodates spaceborne SAR's low SNR by utilizing techniques like multilooking, SNR thresholding, and multi-dataset fusion. Techniques like geocoding and automated road extraction are incorporated to enhance the interpretability of the results. The road surface roughness values estimated through this method aligns closely with ground truth data and also with results obtained using DLR's airborne F-SAR system.