A New Light on SAR Backscattering Coefficient and Interferometric Coherence in Layover Areas

This letter focuses on the analysis of layover effects in interferometric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data of urban areas. In particular, we derive two formulations to express the backscattering coefficient and the interferometric coherence in this case. These equations show that the backscattering coefficient and the interferometric coherence in layover areas can be seen as a combination of the backscattering coefficients and interferometric coherences of the individual scattering mechanisms. These formulations are then tested on interferometric SAR (InSAR) data and analyzed statistically.