A Multitemporal Method for Correction of Tropospheric Effects in Differential SAR Interferometry: Application to the Gulf of Corinth Earthquake

Abstract

Tropospheric inhomogeneities can form a major error source in differential synthetic aperture radar interferometry measurements, which are used in slow-deformation monitoring. Indeed, variations of atmospheric conditions between two radar acquisitions produce variations in the signal path of two images and, thus, additional fringes on differential interferograms. These effects have a strong influence on interferograms and must be compensated to obtain reliable deformation measurements. This paper presents a methodological approach to reduce at both global and local scales tropospheric contributions directly from differential interferograms. It first requires refined knowledge of the stable scatterers that can only be obtained from the analysis of a large population of multitemporal interferograms. The correction of global-scale atmospheric contribution exploits the correlation between phase and topography. The correction of local artifacts is based on the correlation between interferograms containing one common acquisition. This technique is validated on a database of 81 differential interferograms covering the Gulf of Corinth (Greece) and used to improve the measurements of ground deformation compared to global positioning system measurements.