Airborne SAR interferometry activities at CO.RI.S.T.A. within the programme ’’Synergy of Remotely Sensed Data"

This paper gives an overview of activities and results related to SAR Interferometry (InSAR) carried out by CO.RI.S.T.A. (Consortium for Research on Advanced Remote Sensing Systems, Naples, Italy), in the framework of the CEOs Human Capital and Mobility (HCM) Programme Research Network "Synergy of Remotely Sensed Data”. Two main aspects are described here: the analysis of the C-band cross-track interferometric data (XTI) acquired during the MAC-Europe 1991 campaign over the Vesuvius test-site (Southern Italy), and the theoretical activity on an airborne InSAR simulator, in terms of assessment of the simulator performance by analysing the system impulse response. The main technical aspects of the end-to-end processing system, from raw data compression to digital elevation model (DEM) generation and validation, are dealt with. The interferometric data set, compressed with a range-Doppler SAR processor is registered via one-dimensional cross-correlation, and a new path-independent and automatic method is used to unwrap the phase of the resulting interferogram. The output DEM is compared to the Istituto Geografico Militare Italiano (IGMI) DEM, slant-range projected by using the simulation program. The resulting rms height error is critically analysed by means of a theoretical error budget. Concerning the simulator, preliminary results obtained by using the NASA/JPL TOPSAR system parameters are shown, together with the validation procedures, carried out by analysing the statistics of the simulated input signal.