Forest SAR tomography: A covariance matching approach

In this paper a technique to conduct tomographic analyses of forested areas through multiple, coherent SAR images is presented. This technique differs from other methods existing in literature in that it may be regarded as a natural extension of SAR interferometry to the case where several distributed targets are present within the system resolution cell. In this way, it is possible to estimate the position of each target in the resolution cell with virtually the same accuracy obtainable by a single target interferometric analysis. Furthermore, this approach is suited to both single and multi polarimetric channel data. As a validation, this paper reports the results of a tomographic analysis of the forest site of Remningstorp, Sweden, basing on a data-set of 9 P-band SAR images acquired by DLRpsilas E-SAR.