Evaluating PolInSAR parameter estimation using tomographic imaging results

This paper concentrates on the forest height and ground topography estimation by means of polarimetric SAR interferometry and tomography. In polarimetric SAR interferometry, one of the most important methods described in literature is the line-fitting approach in the complex unitary circle (S.R. Cloude and K.P. Papathanassiou, 2003). Although it has shown their principal potential, an open issue is still the precise validation of the estimated parameters, as ground-truth collection is an extremely complex task in the case of forest parameters. SAR tomography is an alternative technique, which generates a fully three-dimensional representation of the imaged scene through coherent combination of a greater number of tracks (A. Reigber and A. Moreira, 2000) (S. Guillaso and A. Reigber, 2005). Forest ground and canopy are directly visible in a tomographic image; a tomographic image can therefore be used as an ideal validation base for PolInSAR forest parameter estimation. This paper compares high-resolution polarimetric SAR tomograms with PolInSAR forest height estimations, both derived from the same data set. This allows to identify areas of good applicability, as well as principal deficiencies of the different PolInSAR approaches.