Techniques and tools for estimating ionospheric effects in interferometric and polarimetric SAR data

Abstract

The InSAR Scientific Computing Environment (ISCE) is a flexible, extensible software tool designed for the end-to-end processing and analysis of synthetic aperture radar data. ISCE inherits the core of the ROIPAC interferometric tool, but contains improvements at all levels of the radar processing chain, including a modular and extensible architecture, new focusing approach, better geocoding of the data, handling of multi-polarization data, radiometric calibration, and estimation and correction of ionospheric effects. In this paper we describe the characteristics of ISCE with emphasis on the ionospheric modules. To detect ionospheric anomalies, ISCE implements the Faraday rotation method using quad-polarimetric images, and the split-spectrum technique using interferometric single-, dual- and quad-polarimetric images. The ability to generate co-registered time series of quad-polarimetric images makes ISCE also an ideal tool to be used for polarimetric-interferometric radar applications.