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Published February 2017 | public
Journal Article

A Network-Based Enhanced Spectral Diversity Approach for TOPS Time-Series Analysis

Abstract

For multitemporal analysis of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images acquired with a terrain observation by progressive scan (TOPS) mode, all acquisitions from a given satellite track must be coregistered to a reference coordinate system with accuracies better than 0.001 of a pixel (assuming full SAR resolution) in the azimuth direction. Such a high accuracy can be achieved through geometric coregistration, using precise satellite orbits and a digital elevation model, followed by a refinement step using a time-series analysis of coregistration errors. These errors represent the misregistration between all TOPS acquisitions relative to the reference coordinate system. We develop a workflow to estimate the time series of azimuth misregistration using a network-based enhanced spectral diversity (NESD) approach, in order to reduce the impact of temporal decorrelation on coregistration. Example time series of misregistration inferred for five tracks of Sentinel-1 TOPS acquisitions indicates a maximum relative azimuth misregistration of less than 0.01 of the full azimuth resolution between the TOPS acquisitions in the studied areas. Standard deviation of the estimated misregistration time series for different stacks varies from 1.1e-3 to 2e-3 of the azimuth resolution, equivalent to 1.6-2.8 cm orbital uncertainty in the azimuth direction. These values fall within the 1-sigma orbital uncertainty of the Sentinel-1 orbits and imply that orbital uncertainty is most likely the main source of the constant azimuth misregistration between different TOPS acquisitions. We propagate the uncertainty of individual misregistration estimated with ESD to the misregistration time series estimated with NESD and investigate the different challenges for operationalizing NESD.

Additional Information

© 2016 IEEE. Manuscript received July 25, 2016; revised September 9, 2016 and September 22, 2016; accepted September 30, 2016. The work of M. Simons was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Grant NNX16AK58G. The Sentinel-1 data were provided by ESA/Copernicus. Part of the research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The authors would like to thank N. Miranda from the European Space Agency for the helpful discussions on focusing terrain observation by progressive scan data.

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023