A Bayesian inversion method for the 3―d reconstruction of settlements from metric SAR observations

摘要

The reconstruction of urban structures from InSAR (interferometric synthetic aperture radar) observations is a complex task. Until now it has been typically approached using the methods of radargrammetry and SAR interferometry, in a direct extension of what had been done in the past for the reconstruction of natural surfaces from, generally, much lower resolution data. We present a new concept aiming at the accurate and detailed reconstruction of the observed city scenes from metric SAR observations. We use a model-based approach for the synergetic analysis of the different sources of information in InSAR data. We define a hierarchical model of the InSAR observation that is both deterministic and stochastic. While the deterministic section describes the SAR imaging geometry and its effects and expresses the different scene structures, the stochastic part encapsulates instead prior knowledge about the signal and defines its attributes while also describing incertitude over the parameters of the geometrical model. Bayesian inference is used to couple the different levels of the model, and to further define parameter estimation algorithms.