Filtering method for SAR interferograms with strong noise

We develop a filtering method for SAR interferograms with strong noise based on the concept of the Vondrák filter and the commonly used Goldstein filter. The one-dimensional Vondrák filter is first extended to two dimensions, and then utilized to smooth the Fourier spectra of overlapped interferogram patches. The smoothed spectra are then back-transformed into the interferogram space. Experimental results with simulated and real datasets show that the proposed filter can eliminate up to 70% of noise in a SAR interferogram. The results also show a 15% to 35% improvement over some of the existing filters when the noise in an interferogram is strong, and the stronger the noise in an interferogram, the greater is the improvement.