Tropical forest structure estimation using polarimetric SAR tomography at P-band

This paper addresses the characterization of tropical forest structure by estimating their heights, underlying ground topography, vertical structure function and ground-to-volume ratio. The hybrid tomographic estimator can accurately estimate the tree top heights and the underlying topography. In order to separate the ground and volume contributions, model-based two-component fitting techniques are proposed to reconstruct the vertical structure function of forests. The proposed techniques are applied to P-Band Multi-baseline PolInSAR data acquired during the TropiSAR campaign over the test site of Paracou in French Guiana.