SAR processing in the temporal domain: application to direct interferogram generation and mountain glacier monitoring
Résumé
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) interferometry has the potential to measure temperate glacier displacement with a large coverage of the surface compared to pointwise terrestrial ground measurements. But the strong topography of mountainous areas, where most alpine glaciers are located, makes the use of SAR imagery rather difficult. Among the difficulties, when the resolution increases, the focusing of satellite SAR images, usually performed in the frequency domain with a constant height hypothesis, becomes a critical issue. SAR processing in the temporal domain is a different approach which enables the use of information such as the local topography. In this paper, we present an original method to perform this temporal domain focusing by modeling the satellite and Earth points relative motion. It allows to produce SAR Single Look Complex (SLC) images directly in ground geometry and reduces the need of re-sampling and phase correction to obtain interferograms. A tandem pair of ERS (European Remote Sensing) SAR images acquired over the Mont-Blanc area is used to illustrate the proposed approach. The results are presented with amplitude images and interferograms measuring glacier 1-day displacements. They are compared with DIAPASON and ROI-PAC conventional SAR processors.