Bayesian Filtering Multi-Baseline Phase Unwrapping Method Based on a Two-Stage Programming Approach

Phase unwrapping (PU) has been a key step in the processing of interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) data, and its processing accuracy will directly affect the reconstruction results of digital elevation models (DEMs). The traditional single-baseline (SB) PU must be calculated under continuity assumptions. However, multi-baseline (MB) PU can get rid of the limitation of continuity assumption, so reasonable results can be obtained in regions with large gradient changes. However, the poor noise robustness of MBPU has always been a key problem. To address this issue, we transplant three Bayesian filtering methods with a two-stage programming approach (TSPA), and propose corresponding MBPU models. First, we propose a gradient-estimation method based on the first step of TSPA, and then the corresponding PU model is determined according to different Bayesian filtering. Finally, the wrapped phase can be obtained by unwrapping, one by one, using an effective quality map based on heapsort. These methods can improve the robustness of the MBPU methods. More significantly, this paper establishes a novel TSPA-based Bayesian filtering MBPU framework for the first time. This is of great significance for broadening the research of MBPU. The proposed methods experiments on simulated and real MB InSAR datasets. From the results, we can see that the TSPA-based Bayesian filtering MBPU framework can significantly improve the robustness of the MBPU method.