A New Phase Unwrapping Method for Disconnected Regions Inspired by Continental Drift Theory

Abstract

Phase unwrapping (PU) is a crucial step in interferometric synthetic aperture radar, as it directly influences the accuracy of surface deformation monitoring and topographic mapping. However, PU in disconnected regions due to surrounding low-coherence pixels and irregular terrain like islands remains challenging. To address this issue, we propose an advanced PU method that enhances network construction for disconnected regions by leveraging continental drift concept and visual contour features. The method adaptively connects disconnected regions and reconstructs a spatial network, significantly increasing the number of network connections between these regions compared to the original network. Consequently, our method can optimize the unwrapping paths, enhance antinoise performance, and improve PU accuracy. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated through both simulated and real datasets. The results demonstrate that our proposed method outperforms the classical minimum cost flow method, achieving a 37.29% reduction in phase standard deviation, and improving the accuracy of subsequent parameter estimation.