Atmospheric effects reduction in GB-InSAR applications

The atmosphere can affect the propagation of the radar signal in free space. The refractive index and consequently the propagation speed of the radio signal, depends on atmospheric parameters and therefore can vary over time and space. This may limit the capability of an interferometric radar system to detect tiny changes in the terrain. This paper proposes a method to mitigate the effect of the atmosphere that makes use of an optimization algorithm and a parametric model of the refractive index that derives from the ITD-R refractive index model. The proposed approach has been tested on real data acquired using a GB-SAR system, cooperative corner reflectors and a weather station. Data have been acquired continuously for three days. One of the cooperative scatterer was placed on a millimetre graded tripod and has been moved during the measurements to better assess the algorithm when a scatterer moves.