IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING, VOL. 46, NO.
10, OCTOBER 2008
Radar Imaging of Urban Areas by Means of Very
High-Resolution SAR and Interferometric SAR
Andreas R. Brenner and Ludwig Roessing
Abstract—In remote-sensing applications, the monitoring of
urban areas by means of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensors
has grown into a valuable and indispensable tool. Although SAR
imaging with a spatial resolution down to 1 m is widespread, a
resolution as fine as 10 cm and below is offered only by very few
SAR sensors worldwide. In this paper, the potential of very high-
resolution radar imaging of urban areas by means of SAR and
interferometric imaging will be demonstrated and discussed. Re-
sults of urban SAR imaging down to subdecimeter resolution will
be shown. Even though the immanent layover situation in urban
areas is an obstacle to simple image understanding, a remedy can
be found by using interferometric SAR imaging. Interferometric
results based on very high-resolution SAR images acquired over
urban areas, partially with a severe layover situation, will be
presented. The corresponding data was acquired with the phased
array multifunctional imaging radar (PAMIR), the X-band
demonstrator of the Research Institute for High Frequency
Physics and Radar Techniques (FHR), Forschungsgesellschaft für
Angewandte Naturwissenschaften (FGAN), Wachtberg, Germany.
It can be stated that high-resolution interferometric SAR will be
an important basis for upcoming radar-based urban analysis.
Index Terms—Interferometric synthetic aperture radar
(IfSAR), layover, subdecimeter resolution, synthetic aperture
radar (SAR), urban areas, very high-resolution radar imaging.
I. I NTRODUCTION
U RBAN monitoring by means of airborne or spaceborne
sensors is a challenging subset of modern remote sensing
and is of increasing interest in the context of the digital cover-
age of our environment. The pictorial acquisition and analysis
of urban areas will be an important tool for the following:
1) supporting urban development; 2) urban growth tracking;
3) near-term damage detection and quantitative assessment of
natural disasters; 4) surveillance of critical infrastructure and
facilities; and 5) compilation of 3-D city models and high-level
geographic information system (GIS) data.
Diverse parts of the electromagnetic spectrum are useful for
this task, mainly the optical domain but also, with growing im-
portance, the microwave band used by radar sensors. In addition
Manuscript received September 27, 2007; revised January 13, 2008. Current
version published October 1, 2008. This work was supported in part by the
German Federal Ministry of Defence (BMVg) and in part by the Federal Office
of Technology and Procurement (BWB).
The authors are with the Research Institute for High Frequency Physics and
Radar Techniques (FHR), Forschungsgesellschaft für Angewandte Naturwis-
senschaften (FGAN), 53343 Wachtberg, Germany (e-mail: brenner@fgan.de;
roessing@fgan.de).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TGRS.2008.920911
0196-2892/$25.00 © 2008 IEEE
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2971
to the advantage of all-weather and night-and-day capability
allowing near-term operation, radar features complementary
information due to different backscattering properties.
In contrast to remote sensing dealing with wide areas in rural
environments or in the field of ocean, snow, or ice applications,
the capability of remote sensing in urban areas is determined
strongly by the achievable geometrical resolution. Although,
for example, for urban growth tracking, a resolution in the
order of a few meters seems to be sufficient, in the case of
quantitative urban damage analysis or extraction of high-level
GIS data, the intrinsic scale of human buildings specifies the
finest necessary resolution to be in the order of a meter or even a
decimeter.
Current civilian spaceborne SAR sensors advance into meter-
resolution capability, and only some airborne sensors probe
into decimeter resolution. In this paper, the potential of very
high-resolution SAR images in urban analysis will be inspected
and demonstrated. However, the transformation of a complex
3-D urban scenario into a 2-D radar image can lead to an
uncommon image appearance, displaying, e.g., small-scaled
layover, shadow regions, slope discontinuities, and multipath
propagation.
A better image understanding can be achieved by interfer-
ometric SAR (IfSAR), enabling us to acquire to some extent
information about the third dimension. In the presence of
layover, height maps created by single-baseline acquisitions
suffer from severe distortions. Theoretically, this problem could
be solved by a multibaseline approach, but in practice, it
provides suboptimal results if the size of the resolution cell
is too large. Therefore, in this paper, the contribution of very
high-resolution data to interferometry in urban areas will be
examined, particularly in layover situations.
The paper is organized as follows: In Section II, the experi-
mental setup, namely, the SAR/ground moving target indicator
platform phased array multifunctional imaging radar (PAMIR)
of the Research Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar
Techniques (FHR), Forschungsgesellschaft für Angewandte
Naturwissenschaften, Wachtberg, Germany, will be introduced.
Section III describes the method used for very high-resolution
SAR processing and provides examples of urban SAR images
down to subdecimeter resolution and a selection of distinct lay-
over situations. In Section IV, first, the interferometric perfor-
mance of PAMIR will be assessed. After a quantitative analysis
of height-dependent coregistration, the methods applied for
interferometric processing and several results of single-pass
and repeat-pass experiments will be shown, demonstrating the
potential of very high-resolution IfSAR imaging.
 2972 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING, VOL. 46, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2008
TABLE I
CURRENT SYSTEM PARAMETERS OF PAMIR
Fig. 1. Interferometrical front-end configuration of PAMIR with three antenna
rows (photographed without radome).
II. E XPERIMENTAL S ETUP
For acquiring very high-resolution data, the airborne radar
system PAMIR [1] is used. In Table I, the most important
parameters of PAMIR are listed. This multichannel X-band
sensor offers a total bandwidth of about 1.8 GHz, enabling
subdecimeter resolution, which is currently demonstrated up to
a range of 35 km.
The front end is composed of autonomous subarrays, each
carrying 16 Vivaldi columns, 16 transmit/receive modules,
and the corresponding steering electronics. It is possible to
reconfigure the total phased array antenna in various ways
such as an elongated antenna configuration for highly sensitive
moving target indication or an across-track configuration for
interferometric purposes, as in Fig. 1. Here, the antenna rows
are vertically positioned as a minimum redundant array. The
actual distances between the phase centers of the antenna rows
are 0.67 and 0.335 m, affording a maximum baseline of 1 m.
Although only one antenna row is used for transmission, up to
five parallel receive channels can be linked to the antenna aper-
ture, allowing variable radar modes. By the use of a true-time-
delay network for transmit as well as for receive, the antenna
beam is electronically steerable over ±45◦ , offering a very high
beam agility without any undesirable squint effects [2].
All subsequent SAR and IfSAR images are acquired in
the so-called sliding spotlight mode [3], where the antenna
footprint moves with an arbitrary but fixed velocity between
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zero (spotlight) and the forward velocity of the carrier (strip
map). This way, it is possible to compromise between azimuthal
resolution and scene extent in azimuthal direction.
III. SAR I MAGING
Despite the fact that spaceborne SAR sensors offer the advan-
tage of global and short-term acquisition of SAR images, most
of them still suffer from a comparatively low resolution. For
example, the European remote-sensing satellite (ERS) and the
ENVISAT/advanced synthetic aperture radar (ASAR) sensors
are dedicated to general purposes in remote sensing and provide
a resolution beyond 10 m. With RADARSAT-1, images at a
resolution of about 10 m are available, and now, with the new
TerraSAR-X, a resolution of 1 m can be attained [4]. Damage
mapping and detection in urban areas with SAR imagery has
been published, e.g., [5] and [6], but it is quite evident that a
fine spatial resolution is of crucial importance.
Finer resolutions are already available for airborne SAR
imaging. In the past years, several institutions realized exper-
imental platforms comprised of large bandwidths, for example,
the TopoSAR with a bandwidth of 0.4 GHz in the X-band
[7], [8], the F-SAR with a bandwidth of 0.8 GHz in the X-
band [9], the millimeter-wave sensor MEMPHIS with a band-
width of 0.8 GHz in the Ka- and W-bands [10], the multiband
sensor RAMSES with a bandwidth of 1.2 GHz in the X- and
Ku-bands [11], and PAMIR with its bandwidth of 1.8 GHz in
the X-band enabling a resolution down to the subdecimeter
scale [12], [13] and providing an experimental basis for a
detailed and quantitative analysis of urban areas.
In this resolution scale, only nonapproximative SAR proces-
sors must be used for image formation. For example, for
X-band long-range imaging in 35-km distance and 10-cm azi-
muthal resolution, synthetic aperture lengths are larger than
5 km, whereas the corresponding range walk in the acquired
data amounts to several hundreds of resolution cells. SAR
processors formulated in the wavenumber domain, like the
ω–k-algorithm [14], represent an exact model of the imaging
process and theoretically perform very well but suffer under
real-world conditions of curved and nonequidistant sampled
synthetic apertures. Attractive alternatives are time-domain-
based SAR processing techniques [15], [16], because they are
inherently capable of incorporating a nonideal carrier track.
In order to get a well-focused SAR image with low sidelobes
in azimuthal direction as well, there is a need to know the
position of the antenna phase center down to fractions of the
wavelength in each spatial dimension. State-of-the-art position
estimation sensors, like inertial measurement units supported
by differential global positioning system (DGPS) information,
are not able to provide position parameters with an accuracy
in the order of a few millimeters. Therefore, prior to the SAR
processing step, the application of an autofocus procedure is
indispensable. In this paper, the estimation of the carrier track
is based on the analysis of the signal response of prominent
scatterers occurring by opportunity in the urban scene.
All subsequent SAR images are formed by means of time-
domain processing modeled in three spatial dimensions and
therefore are represented in ground-plane coordinates.
 BRENNER AND ROESSING: RADAR IMAGING OF URBAN AREAS 2973

Fig. 2. High-resolution SAR image of an urban area (Karlsruhe in southwest Germany) acquired in the sliding spotlight mode.

Fig. 3. Zoomed subset of the high-resolution SAR image in Fig. 2.

An example of a high-resolution SAR image of an urban
area (Karlsruhe in southwest Germany) acquired with PAMIR
is given in Fig. 2. Here, the sliding spotlight mode was used,
which is the reason for the odd border of the scene. The scene
dimensions are 1700 m × 3400 m, whereas the mean ground
range is 3300 m. The special layout of the city, which is radial in
shape and similar to a fan, can clearly be recognized. In Fig. 3,
a zoomed section is shown. Herein, in the upper middle, is the
Karlsruhe Palace situated. To the right, parts of the university
campus are shown, and located in the lower right corner is a
single building with a flat roof.
In Fig. 4, the related subdecimeter resolution SAR image
acquired in a second experiment with a mean ground range of
5800 m is shown. In the upper left corner of the image, parked
cars can be seen in the vicinity of trees. For comparison, in
Fig. 5, the corresponding digital orthophoto is shown.
The information content of urban radar images substantially
varies with their geometric resolution. An increase in resolution
from 1 m down to subdecimeter resolution enables us not only
to discriminate between buildings and streets or between lanes
and sidewalks but also to identify different building and roof
classes (Figs. 4, 6, and 7).

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 2974 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING, VOL. 46, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2008
Fig. 4. Subdecimeter-resolution SAR image of a building with a flat roof.
Fig. 5. Digital orthophoto of the building in Fig. 4 (© LVermA BW,
Az 2851.2-D/4430).
Fig. 6. SAR images of different roof structures (on the right side with an
equidistant arrangement of dormers).
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Fig. 7. SAR images of a roof acquired with two different aspect angles.
Fig. 8. Folded gabled roof structure consisting of panes and metallic bracing
processed with (left) 50-cm and (right) subdecimeter resolution.
In Fig. 4, the building features a flat roof covered with gravel
corresponding to the homogeneously granular appearance in
the SAR image. In Fig. 6 (left), the building has a differentiated
hipped roof with diverse slopes and shaded parts suggesting a
virtual 3-D impression. The building’s hipped roof in Fig. 6
(right) is equipped with equidistantly aligned dormers whose
appearance is dependent on the particular aspect angle of the
radar illumination. In Fig. 7, parts of a building are presented,
which are imaged at two different aspect angles. Even rows of
roof tiles can be distinguished, depending on the aspect angle.
Furthermore, it can be observed that with increasing reso-
lution, extended structures once assumed to be planar often
transform into linear structures or even to aggregations of
numerous pointlike scatterers (Fig. 8).
At this resolution level, buildings frequently exhibit regular
or periodic fine structures, which could be incorporated into line
and edge segmentation techniques as well as building recogni-
tion and reconstruction procedures [17]–[20]. Nevertheless, the
adaptation of structural image analysis to urban SAR images
with subdecimeter resolution is still an open and challenging
problem.
Although the shown examples underline the relevance and
the potential of very high-resolution SAR imaging for urban
analysis, a comprehensive image understanding is delayed by
some severe drawbacks, amongst them, layover is of capital
importance. Due to the fact that radar is by its own definition
range based and with SAR imaging, 3-D reality is mapped to a
2-D image, in urban areas, very often, image pixels may contain
contributions of more than one elevation angle. This so-called
layover effect occurs mainly by simultaneous illumination of
the building’s facade and its roof.
 BRENNER AND ROESSING: RADAR IMAGING OF URBAN AREAS
Fig. 9. Photograph of the upper left facade of the building in Fig. 4.
For example, in Fig. 7, on the right-hand side, the appearance
of the roof is affected by the emergence of the facade’s layover.
Similarly, in Fig. 4, the flat roof of the building is strongly
superimposed by reflections at the facade of the outer surface
and that of the inner courtyard as well. In the left corner of
the building layover, together with the effect of foreshortening
results in a quite odd 2-D representation of the 3-D reality. For
comparison, a photograph of the building’s upper left facade is
shown in Fig. 9.
In the last years, the deficiencies caused by layover were
tackled by several methods, e.g., a dedicated analysis of the
interferometric phase slope [21], by using additional infor-
mation like digital elevation maps, tailored statistical models
[22], appropriate simulative investigations [23], or multibase-
line interferometry [24], [25], where different heights within
a pixel can be resolved. In dense urban areas, these methods
would also deal with small-scaled layover, shadow regions,
slope discontinuities, and multipath propagation. In Section IV,
it will be demonstrated that single-baseline IfSAR, based on
very high-resolution SAR images, can also deliver beneficial
contributions to this issue.
IV. I F SAR I MAGING
The fusion of conventional SAR techniques with interferom-
etry techniques [26], also called IfSAR imaging, allows, in its
simplest form, the measurement of the third spatial dimension
by using one baseline. Only one estimated height can be as-
signed to each pixel. Due to the inferior sampling in the third
dimension, this cannot be regarded as a true imaging process,
and terms like height resolution are not reasonable in the con-
text of single-baseline interferometry. For the assessment of the
interferometric performance of a sensor, attributes like height
sensitivity and height estimation accuracy are of fundamental
importance.
Depending on the sensor’s characteristic, the realization of
the interferometric baseline can be performed by single-pass
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2975
measurements using multiple antennas or by repeat-pass ones
with a single antenna. With airborne repeat-pass experiments,
one has to deal with changing weather and wind conditions
between the passes. Therefore, under the constraint of very high
in-plane resolution, it is difficult to ensure predetermined carrier
tracks and beam illumination functions, resulting in reduced
azimuthal overlap in k-space and degraded interferometric
performance. In the case of airborne multiantenna single-pass
experiments, this problem does not occur because the relative
positions of the antenna phase centers are intrinsically fixed and
the k-sets have a maximum overlap.
A. Interferometric Performance Assessment
Next, the interferometric performance of PAMIR will be
assessed, under the assumption of ideal data acquisition and
based on a simplified derivation. Readers interested in a more
sophisticated treatment can refer to the comprehensive litera-
ture, e.g., [27]–[29].
The essential parameter in SAR interferometry is the coher-
ence, i.e., the complex correlation coefficient of the two SAR
images
E [Z1 Z2∗ ]
γ= = |γ|ejφ (1)
E [|Z1 |2 ] E [|Z2 |2 ]
where E[·] denotes the expectation value, Z1 and Z2 are the
two complex-valued SAR images, and ∗ denote complex conju-
gation. φ, the phase difference of the two images, is the desired
interferometric phase, which can be converted to the resulting
pixel height by exploiting known geometric conditions. |γ| is
related to phase noise. Due to different sources of phase noise,
decorrelation takes place, leading to |γ| < 1. The prevalent
contributions [28], [30] are thermal noise, determined by the
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), geometric decorrelation due to
incomplete superposition of the projected k-sets, and temporal
decorrelation, the latter being a prominent factor in repeat-pass
interferometry.
An interesting limit in geometric decorrelation is given by a
relative shift of the k-sets, caused by enlarging the baseline,
resulting in a vanishing overlap. The associated baseline is
called the critical baseline.
Since φ is ambiguous to within integer multiples of 2π, a
2-D phase unwrapping step has to be performed [31] if the
height difference in the image is more than the height of
ambiguity h2π , i.e., the height resulting in a 2π phase change.
Since in the single-pass case, the height differences to be
investigated in this paper are clearly below h2π , no phase
unwrapping is performed.
In practical cases, we have to use an estimation for the
expectation values, denoted |γ̂| for the coherence and φ̂ for
the estimated interferometric phase, which is found from N
independent samples as
N 
∧ 
∗
φ= Arg Z1i Z2i . (2)
i=1
From this φ̂, an estimation of the pixel height can be derived.
 2976 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING, VOL. 46, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2008
TABLE II
TYPICAL INTERFEROMETRIC PERFORMANCE PARAMETERS
FOR U RBAN R ADAR I MAGING W ITH PAMIR
The estimation accuracy of φ̂ depends on several factors,
the most important being coregistration (subpixel matching
of both images) and coherence. The height dependence of
coregistration, which becomes evident in very high-resolution
IfSAR, will be discussed below.
Clearly, the phase standard deviation and, therefore, also the
height variation will decrease with increasing N . To avoid ad-
ditional deterministic phase errors, the height variation within
the patches to be averaged must be negligible. In real images,
the samples used for averaging are mainly not independent.
Therefore, we replace N by NL , the effective number of
(independent) looks [32], determined here by N , the pixel size,
and the image resolution. The phase standard deviation can now
be written as [27]
 to be considered as a typical value, which means that there are
∧ many regions in the imaged urban areas with a corresponding
∧ 1 1 − | γ |2
var(φ)1/2 = √ ∧
. (3)
2NL |γ|
∧
From var(φ)1/2 , the height accuracy is derived.
Based on these derivations, we will now indicate typical
performance values of relevance for PAMIR, bearing in mind
variations in characteristic heights in urban environments, such
as from buildings or steeples. The values in Table II are based
on the following parameters: 1) ground resolution amounts to
10 cm × 10 cm, and 2) the typical SNR in nonshadowed areas
is estimated to be about 25 dB. For the evaluation of the repeat-
pass experiment, the flight altitude over ground of antennas 1
and 2 was 3215 and 3170 m, respectively, and the ground range
distance of antennas 1 and 2 to the scene center was 5560 and
5800 m, respectively. In the single-pass experiment, the values
related to antenna 1 were used. It is interesting to note the
influence of the high resolution, which is mainly due to the
rapid decrease of the geometric decorrelation with increasing
resolution.
Table II shows that for single-pass as well as for repeat-pass
interferometry, the critical baseline is quite large. Therefore,
we can conclude that geometric decorrelation no longer plays a
substantial part for coherence decay in the case of repeat-pass
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Fig. 10. Occurrence of a coregistration mismatch B2A2 − B1A1 due to
different building heights.
interferometry. On the other hand, effects like residual motion
errors and misregistration decorrelation increase with the res-
olution. In particular, the last item seems to be very critical.
The discussion of local coregistration mismatch subsequently
given in Section IV-B indicates that we have to expect this kind
of decorrelation. Therefore, the height accuracy for repeat-pass
interferometry given in Table II has to be regarded as a lower
limit.
It should be emphasized that in very high-resolution SAR
images of urban areas, a wide range of local SNR occurs. In
addition, it is worthy to note the large contingent of shadow
regions and backscatter responses stemming from paving, side-
walks, bushes, trees, inclined tiled roofs, flat roots covered
with gravel up to the very strong responses created by di- and
trihedral building parts. This yields a large dynamic range of
more than 60 dB. The chosen value of 25-dB SNR as input for
the calculation of the performance values given in Table II is
height estimation accuracy worse or better than 0.7 m in case of
single-pass interferometry with PAMIR.
B. Coregistration Mismatch
As already mentioned above, the problem of height-
dependent coregistration also has to be regarded. This topic
is well known, and if the imaged scene consists of smooth
rural areas, the resolution cell is quite large, and some prior
knowledge of the topography, like a digital elevation map, is
available, the coregistration can be adapted to the local height
values. In very high-resolution SAR imaging of urban areas
with small resolution cells and potential multiple heights per
pixel and without any supplementary information about the
height distribution of the scatterers on the 3-D surfaces of
buildings, height-dependent coregistration is, to our knowledge,
an unsolved problem.
For an assessment of this difficulty, a quantitative analysis is
helpful. The underlying model is depicted in Fig. 10, where the
baseline of an interferometric measurement is spanned by two
tracks of a repeat-pass experiment or, alternatively, by two an-
tennas in a single-pass experiment. The scatterers numbered 1
and 2 on two buildings with different heights will be projected
 BRENNER AND ROESSING: RADAR IMAGING OF URBAN AREAS
Fig. 11. Local coregistration mismatch shown for different baselines (the
mismatch is given in relative units of the size of the resolution cell).
by the SAR processing step onto the ground plane at positions
A1, A2, B1, and B2. If the coregistration of the two SAR
images will be globally performed by one fixed translation
vector, e.g., the ideal one for the coregistration of scatterer 1,
there arises for the scene content with a different height a local
registration mismatch, which for scatterer 2 is equal to the
difference B2A2 − B1A1.
With the parameters of the given flight geometries, the mis-
match can be calculated by simple geometrical considerations
and is shown in Fig. 11 for three different baselines. On the
abscissa, typical values of height differences in urban areas are
given, whereas on the ordinate, the local registration mismatch
in relative units of the size of the resolution cell (here 15 cm)
is plotted. It can be seen that in urban applications, single-pass
IfSAR with a baseline in the order of 1 m is hardly affected by
the registration mismatch, whereas due to registration errors in
the order of a resolution cell or more in repeat-pass IfSAR with
larger baselines, the problem can be serious.
C. Processing Method
Prior to the presentation of the interferometric results, the
processing methods will be briefly described. The interfero-
metric processing chain starts as usual with the formation of
the SAR images corresponding to the respective antenna phase
centers. Again, the position data given by the DGPS is im-
proved by means of an autofocus procedure. The processing is
performed in the time domain including a fully 3-D modeling of
the data acquisition process. This implies, in the case of repeat-
pass acquisition, the specification of both tracks in a common
coordinate system. In the case of single-pass acquisition, the
antenna phase centers are modeled as a rigid arrangement
including the information of the antenna steering angles and
the attitude information given by the inertial measurement unit.
After SAR processing of the repeat-pass images, a coregistra-
tion for a predetermined height is performed, whereas for the
single-pass images, this step is not necessary. The interferogram
is then computed, followed by simple noise reduction by means
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2977
of 2-D boxcar filtering. More sophisticated methods are known
but not applied in this work. Based on the interferogram, the
interferometric phase or the height can be calculated pixel by
pixel, whereas it is interesting to note that by the intrinsic 3-D
modeling, a flat-earth correction step is no longer necessary.
D. Experimental Results
In the following, SAR interferometry results of single-pass
and repeat-pass experiments acquired with PAMIR will be
shown. All data was acquired in 2006 during an interferometric
flight campaign over Karlsruhe in southwest Germany.
In Fig. 12, a pure single-pass interferometric phase image
without any intermixture of the interferogram’s magnitude is
shown. Compared to the SAR image in Fig. 2, here, the scene
dimensions are 1000 m × 1900 m, whereas the mean ground
range is 5900 m. The ground resolution of the initial SAR
images is in the order of (0.5 m)2 , corresponding to each of the
five subbands applicable with PAMIR [1]. After a frequency-
dependent phase spreading, the interferograms related to the
subbands are coherently superimposed and averaged by a box-
car filter with a 2 × 2 kernel. The depicted phase values cover
an interval of about 3 rad, which is equal to a 90-m height
difference. Phase values corresponding to magnitude values in
the interferogram remaining under a certain level are set to a
fixed low value, which is applied in all subsequent images as
well. Increasing height is represented by a color transition from
blue, green, yellow to red. Even in the interferometric phase
image, the urban structures are well defined and discernible.
Roads, vegetation, roofs, multistory buildings, and steeples can
be clearly recognized.
Fig. 13 shows a 3-D representation of a subset in the upper
left of Fig. 12, namely, the Karlsruhe Palace surroundings. To
further aid in noise reduction, an additional 5 × 5 median
filter is applied. Height information is imaged in the third
dimension, and the magnitude of the interferogram is overlaid
as color.
In the following, smaller subscenes attributed with a consid-
erably improved spatial resolution will be addressed.
First, the 3-D structure of the building already shown in a
SAR image in Fig. 4 will be examined. Interferometric data
were acquired in a repeat-pass experiment with an effective
baseline (baseline component perpendicular to the look direc-
tion) of 157 m. The individual SAR images are processed with a
pixel size of 5 cm × 5 cm, whereas the bandwidths are adjusted
to a corresponding ground resolution of 10 cm × 10 cm.
The phase of the interferogram after a noise reduction step
by means of boxcar filtering with a 5 × 5 kernel is shown in
Fig. 14. The boundary of the building is well defined, and due to
the extreme height sensitivity of this interferometric configura-
tion, the buildings superstructures and the roof level are clearly
differentiated in height, and the slope of the gravel at the periph-
ery of the roof can be observed. Nevertheless, most image parts
suffer from severe phase noise. The main reasons are temporal
and spatial decorrelation and the height-dependent coregis-
tration mismatch. The building’s layover areas are associated
with abrupt phase discontinuities, which can hardly provide
a basis for a quantitative height analysis. The corresponding
 2978 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING, VOL. 46, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2008

Fig. 12. Color-coded interferometric phase corresponding to a part of the urban area shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 13. Three-dimensional representation of an interferometric SAR acquisition of the Karlsruhe Palace (height is imaged in the third dimension, and the
magnitude of the interferogram is used as color).

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 BRENNER AND ROESSING: RADAR IMAGING OF URBAN AREAS
Fig. 14. Wrapped interferometric phase of a repeat-pass experiment (effective
baseline 157 m) corresponding to Fig. 4.
Fig. 15. Interferometric phase of a single-pass experiment (effective base-
line 0.9 m) corresponding to Fig. 4.
coherence map, which is not displayed here, contains predomi-
nantly low coherence values, which are mainly due to the severe
coregistration mismatch situation.
In comparison, in Fig. 15, the result of a single-pass exper-
iment is shown. The data of the two outermost antenna rows
with an effective baseline of 0.9 m are processed in the same
manner as described in the repeat-pass case above. The phase
values are represented in an interval of about 1.3 rad, which is
equal to a 40-m height difference.
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2979
Fig. 16. Two-dimensional histogram corresponding to the upper left building
part in Fig. 15.
Already, in this phase image, many objects can be identified
by their structure and height level, e.g., parked cars, trees of
different heights, buildings, and even a wire spanned over the
street at the middle of the left image border. The shape of
the flat roof, which is covered by gravel, is well defined. Two
superstructures of the building that are about 2 m higher than
the roof level can be distinguished. The layover of the facade
onto the roof at the outer part of the building as well as at
the inner courtyard now definitively can be identified by means
of the interferometric phase transition according to the height
variation along the facade. The entrance area of the building at
its upper right side can be recognized by the height coding of
the corresponding layover regions. In the pure SAR image in
Fig. 4, this information cannot be revealed.
The phase distribution in the area of the upper left part
of the building is alternatively illustrated by means of a 2-D
histogram in Fig. 16. Here, the pixel counts over phase values
(ordinate) in dependence of ground range distances (abscissa)
are shown. The roof parts that are not affected by facade layover
are situated in the interval of about 13–19 m and display a mean
phase of some −0.3 rad. The spreading of the phase values
is increased due to the multipath properties of coarse-grained
gravel on top of the roof. In the remaining range interval, the
histogram shows a substantially different phase distribution.
Here, the mixture of contributions of the facade and the roof
induces a severe change in the resultant phase values. Due to
a mostly predominant contribution of reflections of the facade,
the corresponding phase values are largely reduced. In addition
to truly mixed values, phase values that are not distorted by
layover can also be found. This is due to the small resolution
cell in the very high-resolution case. A thorough modeling of
phase profiles at building locations and its evaluation with data
featuring a lower resolution can be found in [33].
In the following, two further results out of the aforemen-
tioned single-pass experiment are shown. A more complicated
layover situation is indicated in Fig. 17. As can be seen in the
left SAR image, the roofs of the displayed buildings now exhibit
 2980 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING, VOL. 46, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2008

Fig. 17. Urban area comprising a serious layover situation. (Left) Pure SAR image. (Right) Interferometric phase depicted as color and the magnitude of
interferogram as local brightness modulation.

a detailed structure caused by a dense sequence of dormers and

chimneys, whereas the ratio of the frontage area to the roof
area is large enough to minimize that part of roof areas without
any layover influence to a small remnant. Therefore, in the
pure SAR image, it is difficult to detect which area is affected
by frontage layover. Merely in those image parts where other
objects like buildings or trees prevent radar illumination of the
frontage is an undistorted image representation of the roof to
be expected. The situation fundamentally changes in the right
part of Fig. 17. Here, the interferometric phase is depicted as
color, and the magnitude of the interferogram locally modulates
the image brightness. In addition to the fact that different
vegetation heights can clearly be discriminated, image parts
formerly assigned to roof areas in the SAR image are now
attributed with low phase values, respectively, height levels, and
related to contributions of grass and bushes near the base of
the building. Corresponding areas are located at the lower end
of both building parts in the middle of the image, particularly
in the lower right corner. Finally, it will be emphasized that in
areas where shadowing prevents layover, it is even possible to
identify sloped roof parts by their inherent phase gradient.
Fig. 18 serves as a last example, where a larger building
structure is shown in a magnitude-weighted interferometric
phase image. The range of depicted phase values covers an
interval of 1.1 rad, which is equal to a 33-m height difference.
Due to an architectural peculiarity, namely, the erection of serial
houses on top of another building, many different height levels
occur and lead, together with the assistance of the intensity Fig. 18. Magnitude-weighted interferometric phase image of a larger block of
modulation, to a proper 3-D impression. Likewise, in this scene, buildings.
sloped roofs can be identified.
The presented results of single-baseline IfSAR imaging, to the 2-D nature of SAR images, the finely resolved inter-
based on very high-resolution SAR images, underline the po- ferograms now considerably contribute to an improved image
tential of forthcoming radar-based urban analysis. In addition understanding in urban areas.

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 BRENNER AND ROESSING: RADAR IMAGING OF URBAN AREAS
V. C ONCLUSION
The relevance and the potential of very high-resolution SAR
and interferometric SAR in urban areas have been demon-
strated. SAR imagery with subdecimeter resolution features a
diverse structural differentiation of urban elements, which pre-
viously could not be attained by data with a coarser resolution.
Although in meter-resolution data, urban structures exhibit
mostly planar characteristics, now, linear structures emerge to
a greater extent, and many pointlike elements or their aggre-
gations to simple geometrical shapes corresponding to typical
architectural elements arise, from which structural image analy-
sis will apparently benefit. It has been shown that in layover
situations, which are very common in urban areas, very high-
resolution IfSAR imaging is advantageous as well, because
adjacent layover areas and undisturbed areas are now partially
discriminable. The digital elevation maps in urban areas be-
come of fine granularity and are closely related to substructures
of the buildings. In combination with a sufficient height estima-
tion accuracy, even the pitch of the roofs can be revealed.
By means of very high-resolution SAR and IfSAR, image
understanding of complex urban scenarios will be facilitated
and improved, and new impulses for applications like urban
monitoring, damage detection, and quantitative assessment and
the generation of 3-D city models can be expected.
One important issue of future work in IfSAR over dense
urban areas comprising a variety of different building heights
is the avoidance of coregistration mismatches, particularly for
small resolution cells and large baselines. With the use of ad-
ditional information, for example, a lidar digital elevation map,
a robust displacement correction in preparation for a building
extraction could be performed [34], [35]. Without a priori
information about the height distribution, it is an open challenge
to locally perform a height-dependent coregistration.
A further interesting topic is the use of multitemporal data
stacks [36]–[39], particularly over urban areas. For example,
in the context of disaster assessment, change detection of
multitemporal SAR data can be used for damage mapping
[40]. Preevent and postevent data together with ancillary ge-
ographical data sets are used to perform earthquake damage
detection, whereas it is stated that for accurate damage map-
ping very high-resolution data are required [41]. As a natural
extension, it could be investigated whether the use of very high-
resolution multitemporal IfSAR data stacks will improve these
techniques.
In the field of computer-assisted image analysis of urban ar-
eas concerning, e.g., structural image analysis, building recog-
nition and reconstruction, or the generation of urban elevation
models, there is a need for the accommodation of existing
approaches—like the ones in [42]–[44]—to the very fine res-
olution of forthcoming IfSAR imaging.
As for the radar sensor and the data processing, the adap-
tation and further development of existing multibaseline tech-
niques [45]–[48] to very high-resolution IfSAR will facilitate
the detection, discrimination, and quantitative estimation of
multiple heights or even the realization of a true imaging in the
third dimension by means of SAR tomography and therefore
remove the obstructive layover situation.
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2981
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank all colleagues who have
contributed to the realization of the PAMIR system. We also
appreciate the support and the assistance of the Bundeswehr
Technical and Airworthiness Center for Aircraft (WTD 61),
Manching, Gernamy, with the flight campaign.
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Andreas R. Brenner received the diploma degree in
physics from the University of Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe,
Germany, in 1987, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical
engineering from the University of Aachen, Aachen,
Germany, in 1993. His Ph.D. dissertation focused
on the various problems in signal processing and
image formation in the fields of magnetic resonance
imaging and ultrasonic imaging.
In 2000, he joined the Research Institute for High
Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques (FHR),
Forschungsgesellschaft für Angewandte Naturwis-
senschaften, Wachtberg, Germany, where since 2003, he has been the Head
of the Array-Based Radar Imaging Department. His current research interests
include array-based radar imaging, multidimensional radar imaging, ultrahigh-
resolution SAR, interferometric SAR, motion compensation, autofocusing
methods, digital beamforming, and bistatic and multistatic radar imaging.
Ludwig Roessing received the diploma and Dr.
rer. nat. degrees in physics from the University of
Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany, where he worked
in the field of high-energy physics.
He joined the Forschungsgesellschaft für Ange-
wandte Naturwissenschaften, Wachtberg, Germany,
in 1980, conducting research including fail-safe dis-
tributed operating systems and object-oriented com-
puter architectures. In 1991, he switched over to the
Radar Section, where he became a member of the
multichannel SAR group developing the Airborne
Experimental Radar (AER) and is currently involved in the Phased Array
Multifunctional Imaging Radar (PAMIR) project of the Research Institute for
High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques (FHR). His research interests
include algorithm development for single- and multibaseline across-track SAR
interferometry.