The United States of America As Represented by the Administrator of the

Howard A Zebker

Richard M Goldstein

Daniel N Held

Pascale C Dubois

Thomas C Bickler

Andrew K Gabriel

Jakob J Van Zul

Lynne Norikane

A technique based on synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferometry is used to measure very small (1 cm or less) surface deformations with good resolution (10 m) over large areas (50 km). It can be used for accurate measurements of many geophysical phenomena, including swelling and buckling in fault zones, residual, vertical and lateral displacements from seismic events and prevolcanic swelling. Two SAR images are made of a scene by two spaced antennas and a difference interferogram of the scene is made. After unwrapping phases of pixels of the difference interferogram, surface motion or deformation changes of the surface are observed. A second interferogram of the same scene is made from a different pair of images, at least one of which is made after some elapsed time. The second interferogram is then compared with the first interferogram to detect changes in line of sight position of pixels. By resolving line of sight observations into their vector components in other sets of interferograms along at least one other direction, lateral motions may be recovered in their entirety. Since in general, the SAR images are made from flight tracks that are separated, it is not possible to distinguish surface changes from the parallax caused by topography. However, a third image may be used to remove the topography and leave only the surface changes.

Method for detecting surface motions and mapping small terrestrial or

Two alternative methods are disclosed for digital reduction of synthetic aperture multipolarized radar data using scattering matrices, or using Stokes matrices, of four consecutive along-track pixels to produce 'averaged' data for generating a synthetic polarization image.

Data volume reduction for imaging radar polarimetry

A synthetic aperture radar (SAR) target simulator for simulating the radar return, or echo, from a target seen by a SAR antenna mounted on a platform moving with respect to the target includes a first-in first-out memory (26) which has digital information clocked in at a rate related to the frequency of a transmitted radar signal and digital information clocked out with a fixed delay defining range between the SAR and the simulated target, and at a rate related to the frequency of the return signal. An rf input signal having a frequency similar to that utilized by a synthetic aperture array radar is mixed with a local oscillator (16) signal to provide a first baseband signal having a frequency considerably lower than that of the rf input signal. The first baseband signal is converted to a plurality of digital words which are clocked into the memory (26) at a rate related to the frequency of the local oscillator (16). A synthesizer (34) is locked to the local oscillator (16) and provides an output signal having a nominal frequency equal to that of the local oscillator ( 16), but altered in accordance with range changes between the SAR and the simulated target, as well as in accordance with Doppler information associated with return signals from the target.

Synthetic aperture radar target simulator

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Altadena, CA, United States of America

Howard A Zebker