On the De-Ramping of SLC-IW Tops SAR Data and Ocean Circulation Parameters Estimation

Abstract

The spectral characteristics of single-look complex - inter-ferometric wide (SLC-IW) swath, terrain observation by progressive scan (TOPS), are significantly different from those of strip-map (SM). Due to the burst mode and series of sub-swaths, the target area is scanned for a short period of time. Therefore, swath width comes at the expense of azimuth resolution. To eliminate quadratic phase drift and achieve SLC baseband, significant processing is required. De-ramping is a necessary step to compute ocean circulation parameters. In this work, we extract ocean parameters from the complex echo signal based on data driven Doppler centroid (fDC) regardless of the OCN product information and geophysical fDC image. The radial surface velocity (RSV) is retrieved from Doppler history, and the significant wave height (SWH) is estimated with an empirical relationship of RSV. The results of ocean circulation parameters are promising when compared with benchmark and in-situ data. This work demonstrates the efficacy and necessity of de-ramping the TOPS data for subsequent use in a variety of ocean remote sensing applications.