Estimating Ionospheric Height From Amplitude Scintillation Signatures in SAR Images

Abstract

In this letter, we discuss the estimation of the location of ionospheric irregularities exploiting the appearance of intensity scintillations in ALOS-2 images, as they are semifocused at different heights. The intensity scintillations (stripes) are not always visible in the single-look complex (SLC) images. However, they start to be visible, as the image is semifocused at different heights with a peak of contrast where electron density irregularities are found (ionospheric height). The slant range between the satellite and the ionospheric plane can be estimated and converted directly into the ionospheric height by autofocusing the stripes. The observations show good agreement with the height of maximum ionization estimated by the International Reference Ionosphere (IRI). Furthermore, we perform an alternative geometric validation based on feature tracking by comparing the shifts between azimuth sublooks. With both methods for the presented dataset, the height of the ionospheric irregularities was estimated to be 330 km.