Unique performance of spaceborne SAR remote sensing in cultural heritage applications: Overviews and perspectives

To be an innovative remote sensing technology, spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is increasingly recognized as an irreplaceable tool in cultural heritage applications, such as archaeological prospection for the discovery of new sites and monument monitoring and management, taking advantage of observation capabilities independent of sun illumination and weather conditions. In this paper, we firstly give a synoptic overview for the state-of-art of spaceborne SAR technology in cultural heritage applications. Then, the unique performance of SAR compared with optical approaches, including subsurface imaging and interferometry, is objectively exploited and assessed using simulations and case studies. Simulations indicated that long wavelength SAR is promising in the detection of relics with an extended geometric dimension, particularly when the performance of tomographic SAR (TomoSAR) in subsurface imaging is optimized. However, case studies proved that interferometic SAR (InSAR) is useful for landscape archaeology by producing digital elevation models as well as for risk monitoring and preventive diagnosis of cultural properties using motion indicators. This study showed the potentialities of spaceborne SAR applications in cultural heritage, with particular reference to TomoSAR and differential TomoSAR (D-TomoSAR).