Effects of Wind Field Inhomogeneities on Doppler Beam Swinging Revealed by an Imaging Radar

In this work, the accuracy of the Doppler beam-swinging (DBS) technique for wind measurements is studied using an imaging radar—the turbulent eddy profiler (TEP) developed by the University of Mas- sachusetts, with data collected in summer 2003. With up to 64 independent receivers, and using coherent radar imaging (CRI), several hundred partially independent beams can be formed simultaneously within the volume defined by the transmit beam. By selecting a subset of these beams, an unprecedented number of DBS configurations with varying zenith angle, azimuth angle, and number of beams can be investigated. The angular distributions of echo power and radial velocity obtained by CRI provide a unique opportunity to validate the inherent assumption in the DBS method of homogeneity across the region defined by the beam directions. Through comparison with a reference wind field, calculated as the optimal uniform wind field derived from all CRI beams with sufficient signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), the accuracy of the wind estimates for various DBS configurations is statistically analyzed. It is shown that for a three-beam DBS configura- tion, although the validity of the homogeneity assumption is enhanced at smaller zenith angles, the root- mean-square (RMS) error increases because of the ill-conditioned matrix in the DBS algorithm. As ex- pected, inhomogeneities in the wind field produce large bias for the three-beam DBS configuration for large zenith angles. An optimal zenith angle, in terms of RMS error, of approximately 9°–10° was estimated. It is further shown that RMS error can be significantly reduced by increasing the number of off-vertical beams used for the DBS processing

Persistent scatterer densification through the application of capon- And APES-Based SAR reprocessing algorithms

Capon's minimum-variance method (MVM) and amplitude and phase estimation (APES) spectral estimation algorithms can be applied to synthetic aperture radar (SAR) processing to improve the resolution and suppress sidelobe levels. In this paper, we use Capon-/APES-based SAR reprocessing algorithms to increase the persistent scatterer (PS) density in PS interferometry (PSI). We propose a PS candidate (PSC) selection algorithm applicable to the superresolution reprocessed images and the corresponding processing chain. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated by a number of simulations and a stack of TerraSAR-X data. The results show that the Capon algorithm outperforms others in PSC selection. We present a full PSI time-series analysis on the PSCs extracted from the Capon-reprocessed stacks. The results show that the PS density is increased between 50% and 60%, while their interferometric quality is maintained.Mathematical Geodesy and Positionin

Beam-Switch Wide-Swath Mode for Interferometrically Compatible Single-Pol and Quad-Pol SAR Products

Future spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems are expected to deliver enormous quantity of data. Accordingly, the observation plan becomes crucial for a proper allocation of the mission resources. A central challenge is to reduce the number of acquisitions by making the same image available for more applications. Here, a relevant restriction is the interferometric incompatibility between fully polarimetric (QP) and single polarimetric (SP) SAR images, which typically occurs when the acquisitions are performed in burst mode, as in case of SAR products with wide coverage acquired by means of ScanSAR or terrain observation by progressive scanning (TOPS) technique. In order to overcome this limitation, a new operational mode, denoted as beam-switch wide-swath (BSWS), was conceived. The BSWS mode exploits the operational flexibility of future SAR systems to generate SP images, interferometrically compatible with the QP ones, keeping the wide coverage characteristic of the SP products. This letter presents in detail the BSWS mode, analyzing its functional principle, and imaging performance, based on a realistic future SAR system, the high-resolution wide-swath (HRWS) SAR, considered for the next generation of the Sentinel-1 mission

Unambiguous Recovery of Multistatic SAR Datafor Nonzero Cross Track Baseline Case

A wide-swath synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image is known to be achievable by merging multistatic aliased data that is collected with an appropriate along-track displacement. However, in terms of both flexibility requirements like potentiality of both along-track and cross-track (XT) interferometry and design requirements like orbital safety, etc., a XT baseline is not only demanded but also unavoidable. In this work, a method is proposed in order to merge SAR data to recover the Doppler spectrum unambiguously for the nonzero XT baseline case. The algorithm is compared and validated by simulating an azimuth invariant multistatic SAR satellite constellation. The results are promising in terms of dealing with XT baselines.Microwave Sensing, Signals & SystemsMathematical Geodesy and Positionin

The potential of synthetic aperture radar interferometry for assessing meltwater lake dynamics on Antarctic ice shelves

Surface meltwater drains on several Antarctic ice shelves, resulting in surface and sub-surface lakes that are potentially critical for the ice shelf collapse. Despite these phenomena, our understanding and assessment of the drainage and refreezing of these lakes is limited, mainly due to lack of field observations and to the limitations of optical satellite imagery during polar night and in cloudy conditions. This paper explores the potential of backscatter intensity and of interferometric coherence and phase from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery as an alternative to assess the dynamics of meltwater lakes. In four case study regions over Amery and Roi Baudouin ice shelves, East Antarctica, we examine spatial and temporal variations in SAR backscatter intensity and interferometric (InSAR) coherence and phase over several lakes derived from Sentinel-1A/B C-band SAR imagery. Throughout the year, the lakes are observed in a completely frozen state, in a partially frozen state with a floating ice lid and as open-water lakes. Our analysis reveals that the meltwater lake delineation is challenging during the melting period when the contrast between melting snow and lakes is indistinguishable. Despite this finding, we show using a combination of backscatter and InSAR observations that lake dynamics can be effectively captured during other non-summertime months. Moreover, our findings highlight the utility of InSAR-based observations for discriminating between refrozen ice and sub-surface meltwater and indicate the potential for phase-based detection and monitoring of rapid meltwater drainage events. The potential of this technique to monitor these meltwater change events is, however, strongly determined by the satellite revisit interval and potential changes in scattering properties due to snowfall or melt events.Mathematical Geodesy and Positionin

DopSCA, Scatterometer-based Simultaneous Ocean Vector Current and Wind Estimation

Satellite wind scatterometers like the MetOp SG (Second Generation) SCA of Eumetsat are not designed to measure ocean currents, yet if they could, it would improve the wind vector product and provide important additional information to the oceanographic community for various applications. Previous publications showed this possibility, but only with modifications to the system. In this paper the possibilities of measuring the ocean current vector simultaneously with the wind vector without modifications to the SCA system, are investigated through simulation studies. The measurement principle relies on phase change in a pulse pair measurement. The results indicate that it should be possible with SCA to measure the ocean current vector simultaneously with the wind with an accuracy of better than 1 m/s on a 50 x 50 km grid.Atmospheric Remote SensingMathematical Geodesy and Positionin

Beam-Switch Wide-Swath Mode for Interferometrically Compatible Single-Pol and Quad-Pol SAR Products

Future spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems are expected to deliver enormous quantity of data. Accordingly, the observation plan becomes crucial for a proper allocation of the mission resources. A central challenge is to reduce the number of acquisitions by making the same image available for more applications. Here, a relevant restriction is the interferometric incompatibility between fully polarimetric (QP) and single polarimetric (SP) SAR images, which typically occurs when the acquisitions are performed in burst mode, as in case of SAR products with wide coverage acquired by means of ScanSAR or terrain observation by progressive scanning (TOPS) technique. In order to overcome this limitation, a new operational mode, denoted as beam-switch wide-swath (BSWS), was conceived. The BSWS mode exploits the operational flexibility of future SAR systems to generate SP images, interferometrically compatible with the QP ones, keeping the wide coverage characteristic of the SP products. This letter presents in detail the BSWS mode, analyzing its functional principle, and imaging performance, based on a realistic future SAR system, the high-resolution wide-swath (HRWS) SAR, considered for the next generation of the Sentinel-1 mission.Accepted Author ManuscriptMathematical Geodesy and Positionin

On the influence of sub-pixel position correction for PS localization accuracy and time series quality

Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) is a time series remote sensing technique to estimate displacements of geo-objects from the interferometric phases of selected Persistent Scatterers (PS). The relative position of a scatterer within a resolution cell causes an additional phase contribution in the observed phase, which needs to be accounted for in PSI processing. Here we analyze the influence of this sub-pixel position correction on point localization and displacement quality. Apart from a theoretical evaluation, we perform experiments with TerraSAR-X, Radarsat-2, and Sentinel-1, demonstrating various levels of improvement. We show that the influence of the sub-pixel correction is significant for the geolocation of the scatterer (meter-level improvement), modest for the elevation estimation (centimeter-level improvement), and limited for the displacement estimation (submillimeter-level). For displacement velocities, we find variations of a few tenths of a millimeter per year. The effect of sub-pixel correction is most dominant for large orbital baselines and short time series.</p

Combination of super-resolution psi and traditional psi by identification of homogeneous areas

The performance of Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) depends heavily on Persistent Scatterer (PS) density. In order to increase PS density, we can apply Super-Resolution reprocessing algorithms in PSI. Involving the reprocessing algorithms and the peak-detection-based Persistent Scatterer Candidate points (PSCs) selection method, the full PSI chain is referred to as Super-Resolution PSI (SR-PSI). The implementation of the Super-Resolution reprocessing algorithm, however, is computationally intensive, which makes SR-PSI time-consuming. In this work, we propose to improve the efficiency by constraining the Capon-based reprocessing to the non-homogeneous areas (e.g., urban areas). We notice that the Capon algorithm performs similarly as the Fourier-based algorithm for homogeneous regions (e.g., grassland), thus we can use Single Look Complex (SLC) images for these areas. With the Coefficient of Variation (CV) as the index, we divide the full image into two classes: homogeneous areas, for which we select PSCs from the original stack, and non-homogeneous areas, for which we extract PSCs from the Capon-based reprocessed images. Then we combine the PSCs of both cases for further PSI processing. We applied the combination method to a stack of TerraSAR-X data. The results show that the proposed approach is more computationally efficient than the original SR-PSI with the effectiveness uncompromised, especially for applications aiming at the urban deformation.Mathematical Geodesy and Positionin

Potential of Sentinel-1 for assessing meltwater dynamics on Antarctic ice shelves in Antarctica

Mathematical Geodesy and Positionin