An Improved Phase Unwrapping Method Based on Hierarchical Networking and Constrained Adjustment

Abstract

Accurate phase unwrapping (PU) is a precondition and key for using synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) technology to successfully invert topography and monitor surface deformations. However, most interferograms are seriously polluted by noise in the low-quality regions, which poses difficulties for PU. Therefore, using the strategy of leveling network adjustment, this paper proposes an improved PU method based on hierarchical networking and constrained adjustment. This method not only limits the phase error transfer of low-quality points, but also takes the PU results of high-quality points as control points and uses the network adjustment method with constraints to unwrap low-quality points, which effectively inhibits the influence of noise and improves the accuracy of unwrapping. Regardless of the unwrapping method used for high-quality points, the unwrapping accuracy of low-quality points can always be improved. Compared with other traditional two-dimensional phase unwrapping workflows, this method can more accurately recover the phase of low-coherence regions only through the interferogram. A simulation experiment showed that the local noise of the interferogram was effectively inhibited, and the PU accuracy of the low-quality regions was improved by 16–46% compared with different traditional methods. For a real-data experiment of mining area with low coherence, the PU result of our proposed method had fewer residues and lower phase standard deviation than traditional methods, further indicating the practicability and robustness of the proposed method. The work in this paper has considerable practical significance for recovering the decoherence phase with serious local noise such as mining centers and groundwater subsidence centers.

Keywords

• phase unwrapping
• InSAR
• hierarchical networking
• constrained adjustment