A case study on the correction of atmosphere-induced phase disturbances for SAR tomography in mountainous areas

Inhalt:
The estimation of the atmosphere-induced phase delay variations is often more involved in mountainous areas due to strong spatial variations of the local atmospheric conditions and propagation paths through the troposphere. Height-dependent phase delay variation owing to vertical stratification of the atmosphere within the same range-azimuth resolution cell cannot be ignored. We propose a regression kriging-based data-driven method whereby phase corrections are applied for differential tomographic focusing at each 3D point of interest along the elevation axis. Experiments are performed on an interferometric stack comprising 32 Cosmo-SkyMed stripmap images acquired between 2008-2013 over the Matter Valley in the Swiss Alps.