Atmospheric Artifact Estimation and Compensation in Differential Polarimetric GB-SAR Acquisitions

Abstract:
In this paper, a study of the artifacts introduced by atmosphere instability in Ground-Based SAR zero-baseline measurements at X-Band is carried out. The Polarimetric Interferometric GBSAR sensor developed at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC) has been used for a temporal monitoring activity of a heterogeneous scenario in Barcelona’s outskirts. An observation period of almost one week has been taken into account to analyze the influence of the variations of parameters such as temperature, pressure and humidity on the differential interferometric phase in the different polarimetric channels. The effects of atmosphere modifications among successive zero-baseline acquisitions are treated in detail. The need to compensate the resulting atmospheric corruption for any differential applications is put in evidence. A coherence-based technique for atmosphere compensation is hence proposed and assessed using a control point placed within the scenario.