A new DEM reconstruction method based on an accurate flattening algorithm in interferometric SAR

This paper presents a new approach to reconstruct digital elevation model (DEM) without compensating the flat earth phase back to the unwrapped interferometry in the Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR). The new approach is based on an accurate flattening algorithm called model-spectrum algorithm which combines the advantages of classic algorithms. The experimental results show that the new algorithm has a better performance than the conventional ones. Based on this novel algorithm, DEM reconstruction can be implemented by a quasi-linear scaling after phase unwrapping. There is no need to add the flat earth phase back to the flattened interferogram, which avoids complex geometrical conversion as what is done in the conventional algorithms.