Terrain height measurement accuracy of interferometric synthetic aperture radars

Presents a simple expression for the accuracy with which an interferometer synthetic-aperture radar (IFSAR) can measure terrain elevation. The expression, derived analytically and confirmed by Monte Carlo simulation, accounts for thermal noise, resolution cell size, terrain slope and roughness, volume scattering above the terrain, radar-terrain geometry, interferometer baseline, and radar frequency. This paper takes a “glint” approach to assessing the impact of scatterers distributed in angle. The results show that there is a residual uncertainty in the height of a pixel due to its angular extent, even when the signal-to-noise ratio is very large. The analysis identifies an optimum range resolution for minimizing the height uncertainty for a particular terrain slope