Deformation estimation via object adaptive phase filtering and L1-norm based SBAS technique

This paper presents a new technique for high resolution deformation mapping focusing on distributed scatterers (DSs). DSs are typically characterized by low reflectivity homogenous areas and involve a coherent sum of many independent small scatterers (no dominant scatterer) within a resolution cell. Our approach first makes use of an adaptive spatial filtering algorithm to improve the differential interferometric phase, wherein, phase flattening and multilooking are incorporated using a statistically homogenous adaptive neighbourhood. Subsequently, deformation estimation is performed using an L1 norm based Small Baseline Subset Algorithm (SBAS). A demonstration is provided using TerraSAR-X data of the town of Lueneburg in Germany. Applicability of our approach for monitoring strong non-linear deformation phenomena at a high resolution is shown here.