Multibaseline post-processing for SAR interferometry

In this paper we provide a tutorial description of recent results of the research activity at the University of Pisa on multibaseline (MB) InSAR processing. The main focus is on the problem of retrieving both heights and radar reflectivities of natural layover areas by means of a cross-track InSAR (XTI-SAR) system. It is formulated as the problem of detecting and estimating a multicomponent signal corrupted by multiplicative noise and by additive white Gaussian noise. The problem of estimating the number of signal components in the presence of speckle is also addressed. Finally, a brief mention is given to recent research trends on robust methods for non-perfectly calibrated arrays and on MB-SAR tomography, which is an extension of MB-InSAR for full 3D mapping of semitransparent volume scattering layers.