Algorithmic PSI Improvement in Mountainous Areas by Atmosphere Mitigation

Abstract

This technical note (TN) focuses on the assessment of the atmospheric effects and their compensation in SAR interferometry and especially in persistent scatterer interferometry (PSI). Different strategies to reduce atmospheric effects exist for mountainous areas. In principle, the topographically-correlated atmospheric phase can be estimated • directly from the data, • from global coarse grid GPS zenith path delay data and • from numerical weather prediction models (NWP). These methods are compared and the related assessment is described in this technical note. The output is a recommendation how to implement the atmosphere mitigation in mountainous areas and an error propagation assessment of the NWP method.