AN INSAR PERFORMANCE EVALUATION METHOD BASED ON VIRTUAL PROMINENT SCATTERERS

An improved interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) performance evaluation method based on prominent scatterers (PS) is proposed to precisely assess the accuracies of the absolute/relative interferometric phase and the absolute/relative height. The critical technical defect of the conventional PS-based method is analysed, where overvalued performance indexes are caused by higher coherence on the PS than on the ordinary ground scene. Virtual prominent scatterers (VPS) around the actual PS are introduced and treated as statistical samples when the indexes are computed. The pixel location of the VPS is estimated indirectly by utilizing the high signal to clutter ratio of the VPS and the accurate relative location between the PS and the VPS. A spaceborne InSAR signal simulation experiment is carried out to validate the new VPS-based method. The developed method can support performance analysis, error isolation and troubleshooting in InSAR systems.