A proof of concept of Iterative DSM improvement through SAR scene simulation

In Very High Resolution (VHR) Synthesis Aperture Radar (SAR) context, very fine and accurate georeferencing and geoprojection
processes are required. Both operations are only applicable if accurate local heights are known. 3D information may be derived from
SAR interferometry (InSAR), But in VHR context, InSAR reveals to be inaccurate mostly due to phase unwrapping problems and to
phase/height noise. Generated InSAR Digital Surface Models (DSM) can only be considered as a first good approximation of the
observed surface. Therefore, we proposed to start from the InSAR DSM, to project it on ground range on a given datum, to model the
observed scene using this projected DSM, then to simulate in slant range the intensity image issued from this structure model.
Comparison between simulated and observed intensity image can then be used as a criterion to modify and improve the considered
underlying DSM.
In this paper, we present the different steps of the proposed approach and results obtained so far, showing that the proposed process can be run iteratively to modify the DSM and reach a stable solution.