Authors:
Luca Spogli
1
;
Elvira Musicò
1
;
Claudio Cesaroni
1
;
John Peter Merryman Boncori
1
;
Giorgiana De Franceschi
1
and
Roberto Seu
2
Affiliations:
1
Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Italy
;
2
Electronics and Telecommunications, Sapienza University of Rome,, Italy
Keyword(s):
Ionosphere, SAR, InSAR, Total Electron Content, GNSS, Mid-latitude Ionosphere.
Abstract:
Trans-ionospheric waves experience delay proportional to the Total Electron Content (TEC), being the number of free electrons present along a satellite-receiver ray path. TEC is a highly variable quantity,
influenced by different helio-geophysical parameters, such as solar activity, season, time of the day, etc. Such large variability may lead to TEC spatial and temporal fluctuations over different scales, affecting the quality of the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) signals and, in turn, limiting further developments of interferometric techniques, such as InSAR (Interferometric SAR). In the specific, the need of catching qualitative and quantitative correspondences between TEC fluctuations and InSAR image streaks is a key
point to drive the development of future mitigation techniques to improve the quality of the SAR imaging. In this paper calibrated TEC values, derived from the RINEX data provided by the RING (Rete Integrata Nazionale GPS) network of GPS receivers, are analysed to as
sess the ionosphere conditions during the ALOS (Advanced Land Observing Satellite) – PALSAR (Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar) passages over central Italy.
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