Generation of Pixel-Level SAR Image Time Series Using a Locally Adaptive Matching Technique

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image time series play an important role in many applications. To construct pixel-level SAR image time series, we propose a locally adaptive image matching technique for the high-precision geometric registration of SAR images. The basic idea is to adapt the local characteristics of ground objects during the process of image registration. Then, by analyzing the spatial distribution of the error of each matched pair in the previous iteration, local areas are divided based on the local clustering of pairs with large errors. A new polynomial is then used to satisfy the local geometric constraint. Based on this proposed matching technique, we introduce a pixel-level SAR image time series modeling method. The experimental results show that the average geometric error of corresponding pixels in this algorithm is 0.073 pixels, while that of the NEST software is 0.242 pixels. The Pearson correlation coefficients of 20 pixels' time series are above 0.85, indicating that the series bears high curve similarity and geometric precision, which suggests the proposed technique can provide high-quality SAR image time series.