An estimation method for InSAR interferometric phase combined with image auto-coregistration

In this paper we propose a method to estimate the InSAR interferometric phase of the steep terrain based on the terrain model of local plane by using the joint subspace projection technique proposed in our previous paper. The method takes advantage of the coherence information of neighboring pixel pairs to auto-coregister the SAR images and employs the projection of the joint signal subspace onto the corresponding joint noise subspace to estimate the terrain interferometric phase. The method can auto-coregister the SAR images and reduce the interferometric phase noise simultaneously. Theoretical analysis and computer simulation results show that the method can provide accurate estimate of the interferometric phase (interferogram) of very steep terrain even if the coregistration error reaches one pixel. The effectiveness of the method is verified via simulated data and real data.