Estimating a preliminary terrain model from the X-band InSAR and the RVOG model

The random volume over ground model has been successfully used to estimate forest parameters with the interferometric synthetic aperture radar. Besides its typical employment with polarimetric data at lower frequency bands, it has also been used with single-polarimetric X-band data to estimate forest height. Based on this approach, we propose estimating the forest interferometric height and subtract it from the X-band surface model, in order to generate a preliminary model of the terrain using X-band only. Since P-band interferometric phase center is closer to the ground, the use of the preliminary terrain model as reference reduces the interferometric phase modulation, facilitating the phase unwrapping. This is particularly important for PolInSAR terrain height estimation or long baseline interferometry, which is used in dual-band In-SAR to improve the terrain height estimation. Two datasets with three-baselines X-HH and dual-polarimetric P-HH and P-HV data, provided by Bradar, are used to demonstrate the method.