Building Height Retrieval from Radiometric Parameters on Sar Images

Urban structure detection, in terms of both geometric and electromagnetic features, from a single Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image is, nowadays, an interesting still open challenge. Within this framework a new deterministic approach for the extraction of the height of an isolated building on a rough terrain is presented. The approach is based on a sound electromagnetic model which fully represents the electromagnetic return from an isolated building to an active microwave sensor, analytically evaluated in closed form. In particular, building height is extracted from double scattering contribution to the radar cross section measured on the SAR image. Some simulation examples, relative to canonical scenes, accompany and validate the proposed approach.