Experimental Study on GBSAR Fast Decorrelation

Signal decorrelation represents a challenging issue for interferometric application of Ground-Based Synthetic Aperture Radar (GBSAR) systems. The behavior of the signal autocorrelation has been widely studied in literature for satellite SAR, for which it decays exponentially in time. Recently, a double exponential decorrelation model has been proposed to account for GBSAR systems. Although be confirmed by experiments, this behavior is far from been completely understood. This work aims to deepen this subject, through experimental studies performed on both natural and controlled scenarios, in order to shed light and get insights on the nature of the fast decorrelation. To this aim, GBSAR data acquired in different frequency bands have been analyzed, together with data acquired with a fast interferometric radar not subject to movements along a rail. From the analyzed data, we can argue that the fast exponential decorrelation is an intrinsic characteristic of interferometric radar measurements.