Ionospheric correction of interferometric SAR data with application to the cryospheric sciences

• Main Author: Liao, Heming
• Other Authors: Meyer, Franz J., Freymueller, Jeffrey T., Tape, Carl, Watkins, Brenton
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: Ionosphere; Greenland; Antarctica; Interferometry; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Fairbanks; Antarc*; glacier; Ice; permafrost; Alaska
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11122/9674

Dissertation (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2018 The ionosphere has been identified as an important error source for spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data and SAR Interferometry (InSAR), especially for low frequency SAR missions, operating, e.g., at L-band or P-band. Developing effective algorithms for the correction of ionospheric effects is still a developing and active topic of remote sensing research. The focus of this thesis is to develop robust and accurate techniques for ionospheric correction of SAR and InSAR data and evaluate the benefit of these techniques for cryospheric research fields such as glacier ice velocity tracking and permafrost deformation monitoring. As both topics are mostly concerned with high latitude areas where the ionosphere is often active and characterized by turbulence, ionospheric correction is particularly relevant for these applications. After an introduction to the research topic in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 will discuss open issues in ionospheric correction including processing issues related to baseline-induced spectrum shifts. The effect of large baseline on split spectrum InSAR technique has been thoroughly evaluated and effective solutions for compensating this effect are proposed. In addition, a multiple sub-band approach is proposed for increasing the algorithm robustness and accuracy. Selected case studies are shown with the purpose of demonstrating the performance of the developed algorithm. In Chapter 3, the developed ionospheric correction technology is applied to optimize InSAR-based ice velocity measurements over the big ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic. Selected case studies are presented to demonstrate and validate the effectiveness of the proposed correction algorithms for ice velocity applications. It is shown that the ionosphere signal can be larger than the actual glacier motion signal in the interior of Greenland and Antarctic, emphasizing the necessity for operational ionospheric correction. The case studies also show that the ...