Mitigation of atmospheric noise in DinSAR technique

Abstract

Atmosphere is a dominant source of error while working with the phase of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images. It can be observed as an additional phase pattern in affected interferograms. In this work we analyzed the influence of the atmosphere masked out the deformation pattern over an area near to San Juan city, Argentina. Different correction approaches are explained and implemented for compensating such atmospheric pattern. In particular, we employed two methods, one based on the interferometric phase itself and a second one based on external atmospheric models. We processed a set of 85 Sentinel-1 SAR acquisitions, covering a time-span of 4 years from 2014. We demonstrate that using Zenith Total Delay (ZTD) information derived from global atmospheric models and/or Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) stations can significantly reduce atmospheric effects.