A Non-homogenous Atmospheric Compensation Method for Deformation Monitoring of Wide-field Ground-based SAR

Abstract

Atmospheric influence is the main interference factor in Ground-Based Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (GB-InSAR) deformation monitoring. Due to the complex terrain and various environmental factors, the correction method based on the assumption of a uniform atmospheric influence may lead to low atmospheric correction accuracy. In this paper, a two-stage semi-empirical model is proposed to correct the atmospheric phase screen during the GB-InSAR monitoring of a super large slope under complex atmospheric conditions. First, the observed atmospheric phase is modeled according to the height and range of the terrain structure to correct the linear atmospheric phase. Then, considering the complex atmospheric conditions and the spatially nonuniform atmosphere with a large azimuth field of view, stable Persistent Scatterers (PS) are selected to obtain the atmospheric phase of all PS by interpolation to correct the nonlinear atmospheric phase. This method is used to process a large field of view radar image of the foundation of the Xinpu and Outang landslides in the Three Gorges Reservoir area. Compared with the conventional method, the atmospheric phase error is reduced by approximately 2 mm. This method effectively corrects the nonuniform atmospheric phase under the landslide monitoring scene and meets the wide-area monitoring needs of the landslide.

Keywords

• ground-based interferometric synthetic aperture radar (gb-insar)
• atmospheric phase correction
• linear variation
• nonlinear variation
• stable persistent scatterers