Review of interferometric synthetic aperture sonar interferometric phase filtering methods

Abstract

Interferometric synthetic aperture sonar (InSAS) is a novel three dimensional underwater mapping system, which is widely used in various fields. Interferometric phase filtering is a crucial process in InSAS signal processing. The study of interferogram filtering method has great significance to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of interferogram, reduce the difficulty of phase unwrapping, and improve the accuracy of digital elevation maps. Firstly, this article introduces the sources of interferometric phase noise. Secondly, it illustrates the difference between real domain filter and complex domain filter by simulation experiment. Thirdly, the various methods of InSAS interferogram filtering are systematically studied, which can be classified into spatial domain filtering and transform domain filtering. The transform domain filtering can be further divided into frequency domain and wavelet transform filtering. Moreover, the advantages and disadvantages of various methods are analyzed theoretically. Finally, numerical simulation and real-data processing experiments are performed, and the advantages and shortcomings of several methods are compared using residue numbers, root mean square error (RMSE), and CPU time as evaluation criteria.