SAR Absolute Ranging - Validation and Application of SAR Geodesy Processor using ECMWF Reanalysis and Operational Data

Abstract

Range accuracy of synthetic aperture radar using modern satellites has been proven in centimeter-range after consideration of geodynamic, atmospheric effects and systematic errors; it is so-called Imaging Geodesy technique. Based on this technique, we have proposed the next-generation of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) products and developed operational software SAR Geodesy Processor in the previous paper. In this paper, we are concentrated on validation of processor and accuracy analysis on a global-scale. Two datasets with different spatial resolutions generated from European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast are used to compensate atmospheric refraction effect in range. At the end, we apply corrections on a Sentinel interferogram by using both datasets.