PHASE STATISTICS OF INTERFEROGRAMS WITH APPLICATIONS TO SYNTHETIC-APERTURE RADAR

Interferometric methods are well established in optics and radio astro nomy. In recent years, interferometric concepts have been applied succ essfully to synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and have opened up new poss ibilities in the area of earth remote sensing. However interferometric SAR applications require thorough phase control through the imaging p rocess. The phase accuracy of SAR images is affected by decorrelation effects between the individual surveys. We analyze quantitatively the influence of decorrelation on the phase statistics of SAR interferogra ms. In particular, phase aberrations as they occur in typical SAR proc essors are studied in detail. The dependence of the resulting phase bi as and variance on processor parameters is presented in several diagra ms.