Interferometric synthetic aperture radar coherence constraints in heavily vegetated tropics

Success of Interferometry Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technique for deriving digital elevation model (DEM) in the heavily vegetated humid tropic using Sentinel-1 SAR has been controversial, owing to the difficulty in achieving good coherence. Yet achievable coherence with Sentinel-1 SAR over the heavily vegetated humid tropic has rarely been reported. Consequently, this paper evaluates coherence achievable with Sentinel-1 SAR over the heavily vegetated humid tropic. Twelve Sentinel-1 SAR over part of Johor selected based on perpendicular and temporal baselines considerations, were used as pairs of six reference and secondary images respectively and processed using Sentinel Application Platform (SNAP) to derive coherence maps and analysed accordingly. The result shows that regardless of image pairs baseline characteristics, coherence of above 0.6 over the heavily vegetated humid tropic with Sentinel-1 SAR can only be achieved in barely 10% of the study area. This result shall serve as eye-opener to geoscience community, especially SAR enthusiast looking forward to leveraging on SAR clouds penetrating ability; and Sentinel-1 SAR open access and short revisit circle to apply Sentinel-1 SAR in deriving DEM over heavily vegetated humid tropical environment. However, future studies shall focus on assessing consistency of good coherence patches and their usability in acquiring elevation.