Stable Scatterers detection and tracking in heterogeneous clutter by repeat-pass SAR interferometry

This paper presents a new estimation scheme for optimally deriving clutter parameters with high resolution repeat-pass SAR interferometry. The heterogeneous clutter in InSAR data is described by the Spherically Invariant Random Vectors model. Three parameters are introduced for the high resolution InSAR data clutter: the span, the normalized texture and the speckle normalized covariance matrix. The asymptotic distribution of the novel span estimator is investigated. A novel strategy for Stable Scatterers detection and tracking by repeat-pass SAR interferometry is also introduced by coupling sub-band / sub-aperture decomposition prior to the GLRT-LQ detector. The proposed method is tested with spaceborne InSAR images provided by the TerraSAR-X satellite.