A SINGLE-PASS AIRBORNE INTERFEROMETRIC CALIBRATION METHOD RESEARCH FOR DEM MAPPING

Abstract. This paper presents a novel single-pass airborne interferometric calibration method with a limited Number GCPs for InSAR digital elevation model (DEM) mapping. The proposed method is based on a rigorous three-dimensional model for a single-pass airborne InSAR system. The corrected InSAR parameters of baseline length, baseline inclination, near slant range, and Doppler centroid frequency, as well as phase offset, can be jointly solved via a unified optimization procedure in terms of the constructed three-dimensional geometric model using a limited number ground control points (GCPs). The proposed method is evaluated on real data of the CASMSAR system in X-band, the final DEMs generated by the calibration processing achieve a high accuracy level (1–3 m standard deviation), even in the presence of only 3–5 GCPs.