Adaptive spectral estimation for multibaseline SAR tomography with airborne L-band data

Abstract—In the recent years there has been growing interest in exploiting multibaseline (MB) SAR interferometry in a tomographic framework, to produce full 3D imaging e.g. of forest layers. However, Fourier-based MB SAR tomography is generally affected by unsatisfactory imaging quality due to a typically low number of baselines and their irregular distribution. In this work, we apply the more modern adaptive Capon spectral estimator to the vertical image reconstruction problem, using real airborne MB data. A first demonstration of possible imaging enhancement in real-world conditions is given. Keywords- synthetic aperture radar interferometry, electromagnetic tomography, forestry, spectral analysis. I