SAR tomography based 3-D point cloud extraction of point-like scatterers in urban areas

SAR tomography as an extension to persistent scatterer interferometry (PSI) approaches has the potential to improve the level of detail of retrievable information, in particular, in the case of layover scenarios in urban areas. In this paper, a processing approach is sketched that eventually allows for retrieving a 3-D point cloud of point-like scatterers based on subsequent PSI and SAR tomography processing of an interferometric stack of high-resolution spaceborne TerraSAR-X data acquired over the city of Barcelona between the years 2008 and 2012. Experimental results are presented in the form of (1) vertical tomographic slices of high-rise buildings and (2) a 3-D point cloud of a larger district of the city of Barcelona retrieved from the tomograms.