Surface Clutter Suppression Techniques for Ice Sounding Radars: Analysis of Airborne Data

Conference: EUSAR 2008 - 7th European Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar
06/02/2008 - 06/05/2008 at Friedrichshafen, Germany

Proceedings: EUSAR 2008

Pages: 4Language: englishTyp: PDF

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Authors:
Scheiber, Rolf; Prats, Pau (German Aerospace Center (DLR), Microwaves and Radar Institute, 82234 Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany)
Hélière, Florence (European Space Agency (ESA), European Space Research and Technology Centre, 2201 AG Noordwijk, Netherlands)

Abstract:
For the ice sounding of Antarctica from space, a P-band radar at 435 MHz is the only option which complies with present ITU regulations. At this frequency the ice surface cannot be considered smooth, leading to high ambiguous returns. Besides simulation, data acquired by airborne sensors are used to evaluate algorithms for surface clutter suppression and mitigation possibilities of ionospheric influence. This paper presents first an analysis of sub-surface along track focussing in the presence of azimuth slopes. For across-track clutter suppression the multiple-aperture technique in nadir looking geometry is considered, in a repeat-pass configuration as the most general case. Airborne data acquired by the E-SAR system of DLR during ICESAR 2007 campaign are investigated to address feasibility questions for the spaceborne case.