DEM generation using Satellite Interferometry

Quite a few people asked me how to generate decent digital elevation models (DEM) using repeat pass interferometry so far. Even though there might be different ways to tweak the result, below is a simple recipe I consider whenever I need to generate a DEM using DORIS.  The following is taken from an email I originally wrote to a colleague, so please drop me a line if you find it too brief.

• Generate the interferogram up to (including) subtrrefpha step.
• Also run the comprefdem (We'll use it's output as an input for unwrapping)
• Do not run the subtrrefdem.
• Calculate Coherence
• Filtphase if you like (try it with both cases. Snaphu might take forever (~ a few days) to unwrap if not filtered).
• Start unwrapping to generate the Snaphu input file. But kill the process (ctrl-c). (Or you can write your own input file.)
• In the snaphu.conf file add the option for ESTIMATEFILE and set it to the output of the comprefdem (CRD_OUT_FILE).
• For more info on snaphu.conf see (http://www-star.stanford.edu/sar_group/snaphu/snaphu.conf.full)
• Manually start snaphu.