Multi-baseline SAR interferometry for terrain slope adaptivity

Conventional SAR interferometers derive the surface height from an estimate of the phase difference between the SAR processed echoes received by two displaced phase centers. An auto-adaptive maximum likelihood algorithm is proposed to process the SAR data from an array of phase centers. The accuracy of the new technique is characterized analytically and is shown to outperform the conventional one. We show that this approach to SAR interferometry provides adaptivity to look angle and terrain slope and reduced phase ambiguity. Moreover, it results in better performance than dual-antenna systems as the terrain slope approaches the look angle, thus reducing the range of blind angles