Interferometric multi-chromatic analysis of high resolution X-band data

The Multi-Chromatic Analysis (MCA) consists of performing sub-bands splitting in range frequency domain, thus generating chromatic views of lower range resolution, centered at different carrier frequencies. Multi-chromatic interferograms can be then generated by coupling chromatic views coming from an interferometric pair of SAR images. The interferometric phase of spectrally-stable scatterers evolves linearly with the sub-band central frequency, the slope being proportional to the absolute optical path difference. Unlike the standard "monochromatic" InSAR approach, this new technique allows performing spatially independent and absolute phase unwrapping (PU). Potential applications for the study of spectrally-stable targets include topographic measurements, atmospheric research or urban monitoring. The technique appears optimally suited for new-generation, wide-band, high-resolution satellite SAR sensors. This work presents first successful applications of the technique using both TerraSAR-X (TSX) and COSMO/SkyMed (CSK) spotlight data. In particular, we provide results concerning the use of MCA for performing absolute PU as well as for height measurement on a pixel-by-pixel basis. Moreover, the impact of coregistration procedure on the MCA-based inference is investigated.