Interferometric Angular Decorrelation Analysis of 1-D Rough Surface With Pencil Beam Incidence

Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) uses phase difference of radar echoes, either from multiple passes along the same trajectory or from multiple displaced phase centers on a single pass, to generate interferogram. Scattering correlation in the angular dimension is a critical factor determining the quality of InSAR interferogram. It can be modeled with the angular correlation function (ACF). In this letter, the ACF of a 1-D rough surface under incidence of a tapered wave, namely, a pencil beam, is studied numerically for correlation analysis of InSAR. An analytic ACF is first derived based on the first-order small perturbation method. It is then validated statistically by the method of moment of electromagnetic scattering. Analysis of the ACF simulations indicate that the ACF of backscattering from a randomly rough surface exhibits a shape of sinc function, which depends on tapering parameter g, interferometric incidence angles θ
₁
and θ
₂
. Several numerical simulations of different rough surface spectrums demonstrate that the analytical ACF fits well with numerical results as long as g is the larger several correlation lengths l.