A Comparison between the Pol-InSAR and PolSAR models for Sea Ice Topographic Retrieval

Inhalt:
Single-pass interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) enables the reconstruction of topography despite the inherent dynamics of sea ice. An InSAR digital elevation model (DEM) is an estimation of the radar scattering center height, which can be biased when the penetration of electromagnetic waves into the volume is significant, especially for thick and deformed sea ice with dry snow. In this study, to correct the penetration bias of the InSAR phase center, a polarimetric InSAR (Pol-InSAR) model is applied for the estimation of topography over the West Weddell Sea in Antarctica. The performance of the Pol-InSAR model is further compared with a polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) model. A quantitative comparison highlights the superior retrieval accuracy of the Pol-InSAR model when applied to the significantly thick and deformed ice.