High-Rise Building Feature Extraction using High Resolution Spotlight TanDEM-X Data

The inherent spatial scales of buildings are determined by the typical floor height of three meter and the distance of adjacent windows. With meter-resolution images delivered by modern SAR satellites like {TerraSAR}-X and {TanDEM}-X, it is now possible to map urban areas from space in very high level of detail using many advanced interferometric techniques such as {PSI} and TomoSAR processing, whereas these multi-pass interferometric techniques are based on a great number of images. In the paper we propose a workflow, taking advantages of the single-pass high resolution {InSAR} data free of motion and temporal decorrelation, to extract features of high rise building. These features include building masks, orientations and especially, a new feature - the iso-height lines. Incorporating the extracted building features as prior knowledge into the TomoSAR inversion may reduce the required number of images. The proposed approach is valiyeard using a high resolution spotlight {TanDEM}-X pair over a high rise area in Las Vegas.     «

The inherent spatial scales of buildings are determined by the typical floor height of three meter and the distance of adjacent windows. With meter-resolution images delivered by modern SAR satellites like {TerraSAR}-X and {TanDEM}-X, it is now possible to map urban areas from space in very high level of detail using many advanced interferometric techniques such as {PSI} and TomoSAR processing, whereas these multi-pass interferometric techniques are based on a great number of images. In the pape...     »