On the MIPS airborne L-Band interferometric SAR system: A first assessment on its interferometric capabilities

The paper addresses a first assessment of the repeat-pass interferometric capabilities of the MIPS airborne L-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) system. In this work, a pair of repeat-pass interferometric SAR data, acquired on Stromboli area, in Italy, will be analyzed. A Back-Projection time-domain focusing algorithm, capable to effectively account for attitude and track instabilities during the airborne radar acquisition, was used. Nevertheless, due to the use of not sufficiently accurate information from the navigation system and/or the measurement of the lever-arm, Residual Motion Errors (RMEs) turned out to affect the interferograms with low-frequency azimuth-phase undulations. In this contribution, we show that use of proper RMEs estimation approaches is necessary to compensate for such azimuth phase undulations and make the MIPS repeat-pass data reliable for interferometric purposes.