Optimum Data Vector Approach to Multibaseline SAR Interferometry Phase Unwrapping

Phase unwrapping is a key problem not only in all quantitative applications of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferometry but also in other fields. In this letter, a new phase unwrapping approach is investigated. Our study is based on the model of the optimum data vector. In order to autocoregister the SAR images, the proposed method takes advantage of the multibaseline optimal weighted joint data vector by extracting all the coherence information available in the neighboring pixels. Moreover, the method employs the projection of the joint signal subspace onto the corresponding noise subspace to estimate the unwrapped interferometric phases (or the terrain heights). The proposed method can accurately determine the dimensions of the noise subspace and provide the robust unwrapped interferometric phases even in the presence of the large image coregistration errors. Moreover, the multibaseline processing idea is a combination of data optimization, image coregistration, interferogram filtering, and phase unwrapping.