The impact of residual motion deviations on forest height inversion by SAR remote sensing

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) has been proved as an effective instrument for detecting vertical structures of forest canopies. However, the quality of SAR images could decline because of phase errors caused by the residual motion deviations after motion compensation or autofocus process. Then, the accuracy of forest height inversion will be affected. In this paper, the relationship between residual phase errors and the accuracy of the retrieved height is established via three-dimensional forest canopies simulation of SAR. The residual motion deviations with different amplitudes and frequencies are considered in simulation experiments. Reasonable levels of estimated phase errors to reach high accuracy of retrieved height are achieved. It is demonstrated that higher accuracy of estimated phase errors is demanded for forest height inversion based on SAR data.