Simulation of along-track interferometric synthetic aperture radar images of Kelvin wakes

The phase information in along-track interferometric synthetic aperture radar (ATI-SAR) is sensitive to the radial velocity component of the scatters. Surface velocity field induced by Kelvin wake make it visible in ATI-SAR phase images. Simulations of ATI phase images based on M4S model were preformed in this study using the velocity field in Kelvin wakes as the input to the model. Various radar and platform parameters were taken into account to study the visibility of Kelvin wakes and dependence of the ATI phase images. High frequency, VV polarization and long baseline are favourable to the ATI-SAR imaging when the time lag decided by baseline and platform velocity is shorter than the decorrelation time of the ocean sea.