Estimation of the Repeat-Pass ALOS PALSAR Interferometric Baseline Through Direct Least-Square Ellipse Fitting

The precise estimation of the baseline is a crucial procedure in repeat-pass interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) applications. Using the ephemeris of the satellite, a polynomial regression algorithm can fit the satellite orbit at the third or higher order with a main shortcoming that the mutual constraints among the three dimensions defining the orbit are missed. In this paper, a new approach is presented to fit the satellite orbit based on the assumption that the satellite orbit is a 3-D ellipse, which retains the relations among the three dimensions. Considering the complexity of 3-D ellipse parameters estimation, the 3-D orbit is first transformed into three 2-D ellipses. Then, the parameters of these 2-D ellipses are estimated with a direct least-square ellipse fitting method (DLS-EFM). These two orbit fitting algorithms are tested with ten sets of advanced land observation satellite phased array L-band SAR data, which were acquired in north Toronto, Ontario, Canada, from September, 2008 to January, 2009. Moreover, two of them acquired with an adjacent period were chosen to form a repeat-pass InSAR, and the corresponding baseline is calculated with the proposed method as an example. The experimental results show that the error of the satellite position using DLS-EFM is at a submetric level, which is less than one-tenth of that of the polynomial regression algorithm. Consequently, the proposed method is appropriate for the baseline estimation in spaceborne InSAR applications.