Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) tomography (TomoSAR) has been well established for the three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction of urban buildings. Many methods have been proposed in the literature for TomoSAR inversion. These methods usually require fairly large data stacks (more than 20 images) for reliable reconstruction. Hence, they cannot be applied to the 3D reconstruction of urban buildings using Gaofen-3 (GF-3) data directly, because there are few images available on average in each city. This paper proposes a novel workflow for the 3D reconstruction of high-rise buildings using small data stacks. In this workflow, we combine the methods of contour line extraction (CLE) and reference-elevation multilooking relaxation (RM-RELAX) for the 3D reconstruction of high-rise buildings. The CLE method extracts contour lines of buildings relying on a data-driven approach and does not need to rely on any external data, which can provide prior knowledge for subsequent processing. The RM-RELAX method is an extension of RELAX, which can obtain more precise 3D inversion with multilooking and reject outliers with the reference elevation (which can be obtained by the prior knowledge of contour lines) of each pixel. The applicability of this workflow is demonstrated by using simulated data and real data with six SAR images acquired by the GF-3 satellite over an area in Beijing, China.

More and more synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites in orbit provide abundant data for remote sensing applications. In August 2016, China launched a new Earth observation SAR satellite, Gaofen-3 (GF-3). In this paper, we utilize a small stack of GF-3 differential interferograms to map land subsidence in Beijing (China) using the time-series SAR interferometry (InSAR) technique. The small stack of differential interferograms is generated with 5 GF-3 SAR images from March 2017 to January 2018. Orbit errors are carefully addressed and removed during differential InSAR (DInSAR) processing. Truncated singular-value decomposition (TSVD) is applied to strengthen the robustness of deformation rate estimation. To validate the results of GF-3 data, an additional deformation measurement using 26 Sentinel-1B images from March 2017 to February 2018 is carried out using the persistent scatterer interferometry (PSI) technique. By implementing a cross-comparison, we find that the retrieved results from GF-3 images and Sentinel-1 images are spatially consistent. The standard deviation of vertical deformation rate differences between two data stacks is 11.24 mm/y in the study area. The results shown in this paper demonstrate the reasonable potential of GF-3 SAR images to monitor land subsidence.

The Hongtu-1 (HT-1) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) system is the first spaceborne single-pass multibaseline interferometric SAR (InSAR) system based on four HT-1 SAR satellites flying in a cartwheel formation. This setup includes three secondary satellites that function as receive-only units to create a compact multistatic SAR system. The primary objective of the HT-1 mission is to generate a consistent global digital elevation model (DEM) at 1:50000 scale. In addition, the HT-1 mission will feature novel SAR imaging technology demonstrations. On March 30, 2023, four HT-1 satellites were successfully launched, and started to provide the spaceborne radar data services to users. This paper provides a detailed description of the HT-1 multibaseline InSAR system, including the SAR performance, the cartwheel formation designed for multistatic SAR data collection with desired baselines, and the uninterrupted synchronization link. The interferometric performance is thoroughly analyzed. With the recorded data, imaging and interferometric processing procedures are introduced, and the capabilities of single-pass multibaseline InSAR DEM generation are demonstrated. Compared with those of ICESAT, the height errors are less than 2 m in flat terrain, and less than 5 m in mountainous terrain. Moreover, the resolution and swath of multi-satellite mosaic imaging are 3 m and 80 km, respectively. The repeat-pass differential InSAR measurement for surface deformation monitoring are also included.

Accurate baseline of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferometry (InSAR) is an important parameter for geodetic application of the InSAR data. Although some advanced SAR satellites have precise orbit determination, there are still many SAR satellites suffering from baseline inaccuracies, such as GF-3. In this paper, an image-based estimator for baseline correction is proposed, which requires only the external digital elevation model (DEM) data. The idea of the method is to project the orbit error phase onto the phase components carrying the baseline error information, which is called orbit error phase bases in this paper, and to correct the baseline according to the projection coefficients. Since the pure orbit error phase is unavailable, the residual phase of the interferogram is used to approximate the orbit error phase, and a series of processes are introduced to weaken the effect of this approximation. Both the simulated and real data from GF-3 SAR are used to validate the proposed method, and a comparison with the conventional nonlinear least-square and the latest proposed flat-earth phase based baseline refinement methods are made. The results indicated superior accuracy and robustness of our method especially in areas with higher relief and wider coverage.

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) tomography (TomoSAR) has been widely used in the three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction of urban areas using the multi-baseline (MB) SAR data. For urban scenarios, the MB SAR data are often acquired by repeat-pass using the spaceborne SAR system. Such a data stack generally has long time baselines, which result in different atmospheric disturbances of the data acquired by different tracks. These factors can lead to the presence of phase errors (PEs). PEs are multiplicative noise for observation data, which can cause diffusion and defocus in TomoSAR imaging and seriously affect the extraction of target 3D information. In this paper, we combine the methods of the block-building network (BBN) and phase gradient autofocus (PGA) to propose a novel phase compensation method called BBN-PGA. The BBN-PGA method can effectively and efficiently compensate for PEs of the MB SAR data over a wide area and improve the accuracy of 3D reconstruction of urban areas. The applicability of this proposed BBN-PGA method is proved by using simulated data and the spaceborne MB SAR data acquired by the TerraSAR-X satellite over an area in Barcelona, Spain.

Phase denoising constitutes a critical component of the synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) processing chain, where noise suppression and detail preservation are two mutually constraining objectives. Recently, deep learning has attracted considerable interest due to its promising performance in the field of image denoising. In this paper, a Neighbor2Neighbor denoising network (NBDNet) is proposed, which is capable of simultaneously estimating phase and coherence in both single-look and multi-look cases. Specifically, repeat-pass PALSAR real interferograms encompassing a diverse range of coherence, fringe density, and terrain features are used as the training dataset, and the novel Neighbor2Neighbor self-supervised training framework is leveraged. The Neighbor2Neighbor framework eliminates the necessity of noise-free labels, simplifying the training process. Furthermore, rich features can be learned directly from real interferograms. In order to validate the denoising capability and generalization ability of the proposed NBDNet, simulated data, repeat-pass data from Sentinel-1 Interferometric Wide (IW) swath mode, and single-pass data from Hongtu-1 stripmap mode are used for phase denoising experiments. The results demonstrate that NBDNet performs well in terms of noise suppression, detail preservation and computation efficiency, validating its potential for high-precision and high-resolution topography reconstruction.