Verification of the virtual bandwidth SAR (VB-SAR) scheme for centimetric resolution subsurface imaging from space

Edwards-Smith, A., Morrison, K. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8075-0316, Zwieback, S. and Hajnsek, I. (2018) Verification of the virtual bandwidth SAR (VB-SAR) scheme for centimetric resolution subsurface imaging from space. Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 56 (1). pp. 25-34. ISSN 0196-2892 doi: 10.1109/TGRS.2017.2717340

Abstract/Summary

This work presents the first experimental demonstration of the virtual bandwidth synthetic aperture radar (VB-SAR) imaging scheme. VB-SAR is a newly-developed subsurface imaging technique which, in stark contrast to traditional close-proximity ground penetrating radar (GPR) schemes, promises imaging from remote standoff platforms such as aircraft and satellites. It specifically exploits the differential interferometric synthetic aperture radar (DInSAR) phase history of a radar wave within a drying soil volume to generate high- resolution vertical maps of the scattering through the soil volume. For this study, a stack of C-band VV polarisation DInSAR images of a sandy soil containing a buried target was collected in the laboratory whilst the soil moisture was varied - firstly during controlled water addition, and then during subsequent drying. The wetting image set established the moisture-phase relationship for the soil, which was then applied to the drying DInSAR image set using the VB-SAR scheme. This allowed retrieval of high resolution VB-SAR imagery with a vertical discrimination of 0.04m from a stack of 1m vertical resolution DInSAR images. This work unequivocally shows that the basic principles of the VB-SAR technique are valid and opens the door to further investigation of this promising technique.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/73209
Identification Number/DOI	10.1109/TGRS.2017.2717340
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	IEEE
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