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Introduction to Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar

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InSAR Imaging of Aleutian Volcanoes

Part of the book series: Springer Praxis Books ((GEOPHYS))

Abstract

Radar is an acronym for radio detection and ranging, which hints at some of the technique’s uses and capabilities. Radars operate in the microwave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, which encompasses wavelengths (λ) from 1 meter (m) to 1 mm (mm), or equivalently, frequencies (f ) from 300 megaHertz (MHz) to 300 gigaHertz (GHz). By international convention, the entire radar spectrum is divided into several bands with different designations and uses. Of particular interest here are X-band (f = 8–12 GHz, λ = 2.5–3.75 cm), C-band (f = 4–8 GHz, λ = 3.75–7.5 cm), and L-band (f = 1–2 GHz, λ = 15–30 cm)—the bands used by radar systems in Earth orbit that provide data for our study of how volcanoes deform.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It is common knowledge that the speed of light, c, is constant in a vacuum. Lesser known is the fact that the propagation speed v of light and other types of electromagnetic waves, including radar waves, is a function of the refractive index n through which they travel: v = c/n. The value of n is 1 for a vacuum, greater than 1 for the troposhere, and less than 1 for the ionosphere. Moist air has a larger refractive index than dry air, so radar signals travel slower through parts of the atmosphere that are laden with water vapor than they do through parts that are drier. Resulting arrival-time delays show up in deformation interferograms as spurious fringes that are referred to as atmospheric delay anomalies or artifacts. Free electrons in the ionosphere “speed up” the radar signal, causing an advance of the signal phase that strongly depends on the signal frequency (Hanssen 2001; Meyer et al. 2006; Meyer 2011).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. US Geological Survey Cascades Volcano Observatory, Vancouver, WA, USA

    Zhong Lu & Daniel Dzurisin

  2. Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, USA

    Zhong Lu

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  1. Zhong Lu
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  2. Daniel Dzurisin
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Correspondence to Zhong Lu .

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Lu, Z., Dzurisin, D. (2014). Introduction to Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar. In: InSAR Imaging of Aleutian Volcanoes. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00348-6_1

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