Characterization of C-band and X-band InSAR data for 3D urban analysis

In this paper we compare C and X-band SAR measurements over the same urban area to understand which kind of information they are able to provide and which are the differences and similarities of the data sets. In particular, we consider data recorded over Los Angeles by the C-band NASA/JPL AIRSAR, system and by the X-band Intermap Star-3i system. We analyze for both data sets the original range measurements as reconstructed after the phase unwrapping procedure, the bald earth topography that we were able to retrieve, and the 3D shapes of some of the buildings in the UCLA campus area. Our results show that, despite of the lower resolution, AIRSAR data are still able to provide interesting views of an urban environment. The better ground resolution of the X-band system allows to perform slightly better building analysis and extraction. Both systems suffer from large data drop out regions that prevents the original data to be immediately useful. However, it is still possible to extract the terrain height to some extent by means of filtering procedure and to deduce built structure characteristics if suitable ad hoc algorithms are introduced.