Automatic Extraction of Traffic Flows Using TerraSAR-X Along-Track Interferometry

作者：Suchandt Steffen^*; Runge Hartmut; Breit Helko; Steinbrecher Ulrich; Kotenkov Alexander; Balss Ulrich

来源：IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 2010, 48(2): 807-819.

DOI：10.1109/TGRS.2009.2037919

• Along-track interferometry (ATI)
• synthetic aperture radar (SAR)
• TerraSAR-X
• traffic measurement

Spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) offers great potential for the measurement of ground traffic flows. A SAR with multiple receiving apertures aligned in flight direction repeatedly images the same ground area with a short time lag. This allows for an effective detection of moving ground objects, whose range variation translates into an interferometric phase signal between the receiving channels. The high-resolution German SAR satellite TerraSAR-X offers several ways to create multiple along-track apertures. We exploit this to demonstrate satellite-based traffic-flow measurements using along-track interferometry (ATI) and Displaced Phase Center Array techniques. In this paper, we address the usage of different TerraSAR-X ATI modes for data acquisition and describe an automatic near-real-time processing chain for the extraction of traffic information. The performance of this TerraSAR-X traffic processor is significantly driven by incorporating a priori knowledge of road networks. We present examples of automatic traffic detection as well as empirical evaluations thereof using different kind of reference data.

• 出版日期2010-2