Toward Mitigating Stratified Tropospheric Delays in Multitemporal InSAR: A Quadtree Aided Joint Model

Hongyu Liang, Lei Zhang, Xiaoli Ding, Zhong Lu, Xin Li

Research output: Journal article publicationJournal articleAcademic researchpeer-review

61 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Tropospheric delays (TDs) in differential interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) measurements are mainly caused by spatial and temporal variation of pressure, temperature, and humidity between SAR acquisitions. These delays are described as one of the primary error sources in InSAR observations. Although independent atmospheric measurements have been used to correct TDs, their sparse spatial or temporal resolution requires interpolation, leading to uncertainties in the corrected interferograms. The performance of the conventional phase-based correction method is weakened by the presence of confounding signals (e.g., TDs, deformation, and topographic errors) and spatial variability of the troposphere. Here, we propose a method that can simultaneously estimate stratified TDs together with parameters of deformation and topographic error based on their distinct spatial-Temporal correlation. Spatial variability of the relationship between TDs and topographic height is addressed through localized estimation in windows divided by quadtree according to height gradient. We demonstrate the performance of the proposed method with both simulated and real data sets. In addition, both advantages and disadvantages of this method are addressed.

Original languageEnglish
Article number8424553
Pages (from-to)291-303
Number of pages13
JournalIEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Volume57
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2019

Keywords

  • Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR)
  • least squares
  • tropospheric delays (TDs)

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering
  • General Earth and Planetary Sciences

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