MERIS Atmospheric Water Vapor Correction Model for Wide Swath Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar

Author

Li, Zhenhong ; Pasquali, Paolo ; Cantone, Alessio ; Singleton, Andrew ; Funning, Gareth ; Forrest, David

Author_Institution

Sch. of Geogr. & Earth Sci., Univ. of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

Volume

9

Issue

2

fYear

2012

fDate

3/1/2012 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

257

Lastpage

261

Abstract

A major source of error for repeat-pass interferometric synthetic aperture radar is the phase delay in radio signal propagation through the atmosphere, particularly the part due to tropospheric water vapor. These effects become more significant for ScanSAR observations due to their wider coverage (e.g., 400 km × 400 km for ENVISAT Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) wide swath (WS) mode versus 100 km × 100 km for ASAR image mode). In this letter, we demonstrate for the first time that a Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer water vapor correction model can significantly reduce atmospheric water vapor effects on ASAR WS interferograms, with the phase variation in non-deforming areas decreasing from 3.8 cm before correction to 0.4 cm after correction.

Keywords

atmospheric humidity; radiometry; remote sensing by radar; synthetic aperture radar; ASAR WS interferograms; Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar; ENVISAT ASAR wide swath mode; MERIS model; Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer; ScanSAR observations; atmospheric water vapor correction; atmospheric water vapor effects; interferometric synthetic aperture radar; phase delay; radio signal propagation; tropospheric water vapor; Atmospheric modeling; Clouds; Earthquakes; Image resolution; Radar imaging; Synthetic aperture radar; Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS); ScanSAR; radar interferometry; synthetic aperture radar (SAR); water vapor correction; wide swath (WS) interferometric SAR (InSAR);

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1545-598X

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LGRS.2011.2166053

Filename

6034513