Proc. 2000 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, July 24-28, 2000, vol. 3, pp. 960-962, Honolulu, Hawaii.

Combining Interferometric Radar and Laser Altimeter Data to Improve Estimates of Topography

K. Clint Slatton (1), Melba M. Crawford (2), and Brian L. Evans (1)

(1) Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Engineering Science Building, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712-1084
slatton@ece.utexas.edu - bevans@ece.utexas.edu

(2) Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712
crawford@csr.utexas.edu

Paper - Poster

Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (INSAR) has been used to map terrain topography; however, accuracy is limited because observations are not measurements of true surface topography over vegetated areas. Instead, the measurements, which depend on the senor and the vegetation, represent some height above the true surface. We solve an inverse problem for INSAR scattering to determine surface and vegetation elevations, and then incorporate sparse laser altimeter observations to improve the estimates of surface and vegatation elevations.

Last Updated 11/24/00.