Maritime SAR Interferometry
Tarikhi, Parviz
Alborz Space Center, IRAN, ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF

Radar remote sensing is one of the new earth observation technologies with promising results and future. InSAR is a sophisticated radar remote sensing technique for combining synthetic aperture radar (SAR) complex images to form interferogram and utilizing its phase contribution to land topography, surface movement and target velocity. In recent years considerable applications of Interferometric SAR technique are developed. It is an established technique for precise assessment of land surface movements, and generating high quality digital elevation models (DEM) from space-borne and air-borne data. InSAR is able to produce DEM with the precision of a couple of ten meters whereas its movement map results have sub-centimeter precision. The technique has many applications in the context of earth sciences such as in topographic mapping, environmental modelling, rainfall-runoff studies, landslide hazard zonation, and seismic source modelling.
In addition to above-mentioned advancements new developments is taking place in the application of the InSAR for aquatic bodies. We have observed that using SAR Interferometry technique for aquatic bodies with the temporal baseline of maximum 16 seconds could show considerable results enabling us to estimate the direction of sea surface motion in larger extent, the change in the height of the sea surface in the direction of satellite sensor, the sea surface disturbance and whether the water motion is bulk and smooth or otherwise. This paper presents our experience and achievements on this new topic through discussing the facts and conditions for the use of InSAR technique. The method has been examined for Haiti, western Chile and western Turkey coast areas. We have studied 1860 Envisat SLC SAR images of Western Turkey including Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea coast areas and inland lakes acquired in 2002-2010. However empirical field checkups are still necessary and the job is scheduled to be continued for fulfilling this stage.