Role of the Orbital Tube in Interferometric Spaceborne SAR Missions

Author

Prats-Iraola, Pau ; Rodriguez-Cassola, Marc ; De Zan, Francesco ; Scheiber, Rolf ; Lopez-Dekker, Paco ; Barat, Itziar ; Geudtner, Dirk

Author_Institution

Eur. Space & Technol. Center, Eur. Space Agency, Noordwijk, Netherlands

Volume

12

Issue

7

fYear

2015

fDate

7/1/2015 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1486

Lastpage

1490

Abstract

The orbit for Earth observation satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) missions is maintained within an Earth-fixed orbital tube to ensure ground-track coverage repeatability and, consequently, to enable repeat-pass interferometric compatibility between data takes. In this letter, it is shown that the size of the orbital tube may affect the interferometric performance in terms of azimuth spectral decorrelation and azimuth coregistration accuracy under the presence of squint. These effects require special consideration for SAR burst modes, such as ScanSAR or TOPS (i.e., Terrain Observation by Progressive Scans). This letter presents and analyzes these aspects in the frame of the Sentinel-1 mission.

Keywords

Earth orbit; decorrelation; radar interferometry; spaceborne radar; synthetic aperture radar; Earth observation satellite synthetic aperture radar mission; Earthfixed orbital tube; ScanSAR; Sentinel-1 mission; TOPS; azimuth coregistration accuracy; azimuth spectral decorrelation; ground-track coverage repeatability; interferometric spaceborne SAR mission; repeat-pass interferometric compatibility; terrain observation by progressive scan; Azimuth; Doppler effect; Electron tubes; Orbits; Remote sensing; Satellites; Synthetic aperture radar; Coregistration; ScanSAR; Terrain Observation by Progressive Scans (TOPS); interferometric SAR (InSAR); orbital tube; spectral decorrelation; synthetic aperture radar (SAR);

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1545-598X

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LGRS.2015.2409885

Filename

7065218