Sea state observation through a three-antenna hybrid XT/AT InSAR configuration: A preliminary study based on the InSAeS4 airborne system

Abstract

In this work, we investigate the sea surface monitoring capabilities of a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) system equipped with a three-antenna hybrid Across Track (XT)/Along Track (AT) inteferometric configuration. To do this, we focus on the X-Band airborne InSAeS4 SAR system. Moreover, we propose a simple but effective methodology that allows simultaneous retrieval of the sea surface height and velocity by means of a straightforward, easy-to-implement, linear inversion procedure, which is very general and can be implemented with any system equipped with a three-antenna hybrid XT/AT Interferometric SAR (InSAR) configuration. In our case, we present an experiment carried out in January 2013 in South Italy over the coastline stretch of the Campania region including the Volturno River outlet. In this regard, we highlight that in situ measurements of the retrieved sea surface height and velocity at the time of the airborne mission are unfortunately not available. Notwithstanding, the obtained results show some interesting evidence that the estimated quantities are physically sound. This, on the one side, provides a preliminary validation of the effectiveness of the overall presented methodology and, on the other side, highlights the potentialities of the three-antenna hybrid XT/AT InSAR configuration of the InSAeS4 system for sea state monitoring.