Assessing Ionospheric Influence on L-Band SAR Data: Implications on Coseismic Displacement Measurements of the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake

Author

Raucoules, D. ; de Michele, M.

Author_Institution

Risques Naturels et Securite du Stockage du CO2/Risques Sous-Sol et Cavites, BRGM, Orleans, France

Volume

7

Issue

2

fYear

2010

fDate

4/1/2010 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

286

Lastpage

290

Abstract

Ionospheric contributions to the phase of L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) signals put severe limitations on ground displacement measurements retrieved by either differential SAR interferometry or radar amplitude-image offsets. Such contributions result in an ionospheric phase screen on the differential interferogram and in directional fluctuations in the relative position of azimuth pixels on offsets maps. In this letter, we propose a procedure for estimating and removing ionospheric contributions to surface displacement measurements derived from L-band SAR data. We test the procedure on SAR data from the May 28, 2008 Sichuan Earthquake. The applied corrections allow both a clearer interpretation of the surface rupture and a more accurate measurement of the surface displacement, which has important implications in earthquake modeling based on L-band SAR data.

Keywords

atmospheric techniques; earthquakes; ionosphere; radar interferometry; remote sensing by radar; seismology; synthetic aperture radar; AD 2008 05 28; China; L-band SAR data; SAR interferometry; Sichuan earthquake; coseismic displacement measurements; differential interferogram; directional fluctuations; earthquake modeling; ionospheric influence; ionospheric phase screen; offsets maps; radar amplitude-image offsets; surface displacement; surface rupture; synthetic aperture radar signals; Earthquake; interferometry; ionosphere; radar;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1545-598X

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LGRS.2009.2033317

Filename

5313903