A Comparative Analysis of Branch-Cut and Quality-Guided Algorithms For inSAR Interferogram

Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (inSAR) phase image is a key for the digital elevation model of earth mapping. To achieve this three-dimensional reconstruction, phase unwrapping process must be performed whitch is used to calculate the accurate elevations from the wrapped phase map. For the noise-free images, this process is just a simple integration of the wrapped gradient. But in reality, there is no phase image without noise, therefore the phase unwrapping have to be adaptive with a strong immunity to noise. Several adaptive algorithms have been proposed in such area where Goldstein’s branch-cut and Flynn’s quality-guided are the widely known in the path-following category, they are the most used methods and all other propositions are just enhancements or hybridizations. In this paper, we analyze the performance of each one and provide the substantial difference between them. Both algorithms are implemented using simulated and real inSAR data of different patterns and are analyzed under several relevant criteria.