Comparison of Co-registration Algorithms for TOPS SAR Image

For TOPS InSAR processing, high-precision image co-registration is required. We propose an image co-registration method suitable for the TOPS mode by comparing the performance of cross correlation method, the geometric co-registration and the enhanced spectral diversity (ESD) matching algorithm based on the spectral diversity (SD) on the Sentinel-1 TOPS mode image. Using 23 pairs of interferometric pairs generated from 25 Sentinel-1 TOPS images, we applied the cross correlation (CC), geometric correction with only orbit information (GC1), geometric correction combined with iterative cross-correlation (GC2, GC3, GC4), and ESD iteration (ESD_GC, ESD_1, ESD_2). The mean of coregistration errors in azimuth direction by cross correlation and geometric matching are 0.0041 pixels and 0.0016 pixels, respectively. Although the ESD method shows the most accurate result with the error of less than 0.0005 pixels, the error of geometric co-registration is reduced to 0.001 pixels by repetition through additional cross correlation matching between the reference and resampled slave image. The ESD method is not applicable when the coherence of the burst overlap areas is low. Therefore, the geometric co-registration method through iterative processing is a suitable alternative for time series analysis using multiple SAR data or generating interferogram with long time intervals.