Permanent scatterers detection using raw SAS data

The study of permanent scatterers (or stable scatterers) is an active field of research in the SAR community. Permanent scatterers are characterised by a stable response in amplitude and in phase. They are mainly part of man-made structures. Most of them are cubic trihedrons which represent a perfect reflector for EM waves. A direct consequence is the stability of the backscattering wave relative to speckle noise. In this paper we discuss a generic method to describe natural objects and man-made objects. In our approach natural objects are represented as 3D volume with rough fractal surfaces. The man-made objects in another hand can be model by a 3D volume with smooth geometrical shapes. As a consequence the backscattering echo from a man-made object can be approximated by a finite number of scatterers. The intrinsic nature of SAS system offers a multi-view aspect of an insonified target. We present here an algorithm which takes advantage of the multi aspect to track down stable scatterers in SAS images