Visibility analysis of man-made objects in SAR images

The increasing resolution of SAR data offers the possibility to utilize this data for a detailed scene interpretation in urban areas. Different SAR specific phenomena like foreshortening, layover, shadow and multipath-propagation burden the interpretation. A high resolution LIDAR DEM of an urban scene is incorporated to investigate the impact of the phenomena on the visibility of man-made objects by a SAR measurement from a given sensor trajectory and orientation. LIDAR data as ground truth is well suited for this task, because it contains elevation information of man-made and natural objects. Incoherent sampling of the DEM simulates shadow and layover areas. By a variation of viewing and aspect angles a large number of such simulations are carried out. From this set of segmentations the n best are determined with respect to the visibility of roads and buildings. Furthermore, the locations of total reflection or double-bounce scattering in the vicinity of buildings are determined.