Height estimation for high-rise buildings based on InSAR analysis

Owing to the remarkable improvements that have been made in radar sensors, it becomes possible to obtain the information for a single structure from high-resolution SAR images. In our previous research, a method for detecting the heights of low-rise buildings automatically was proposed using 2D GIS data and a single high-resolution TerraSAR-X intensity image. However, this method is difficult to apply for high-rise buildings due to surface/material conditions of their exterior walls. In this study, a new method was developed for estimating the heights of high-rise buildings based on the results from an Interferometric SAR (InSAR) analysis. The characteristics of phases in the InSAR result were investigated and used for extracting the potential layover areas of target buildings. Then, the heights were estimated according to their layover lengths. The developed method was tested on two TerraSAR-X images for San Francisco, USA, in the HighSpot mode. Comparing the result with Lidar data, the detected heights were found to be reasonable.