Differential SAR Interferometry and Co-polar Phase Differences for Snow Water Equivalent Estimation

Abstract

Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) is important for hydrological models. It has been shown that the interferometric phase between two repeat-pass SAR measurements can be related to SWE change, but this method is limited due to phase wrapping. It is possible to relate the Co-polar Phase Difference (CPD) between two channels to the fresh snow depth. This study presents a first approach to include the information from the CPD in the DInSAR SWE retrieval to overcome the phase wrapping problem. Preliminary results show that the link between CPD and depth change can be used to estimate wraps of the interferometric phase.