Evaluation of Residual Phase from Orbit Accuracy Using TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X SAR Observation

Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) is used to observe precise surface displacement and create digital elevation models by calculating the phase differences between two or more SAR images obtained over the same surface area. The phase of a repeat-pass interferogram can be expressed as the sum of contributions from topography, ground displacement, earth curvature, noise, and the satellite’s orbital phase component. For precise observations, removing unnecessary phase components is essential. Errors owing to the satellite’s orbit accuracy leave residual phases in the interferogram, which become a significant limitation for wide-area ground displacement monitoring using the InSAR technique. This study used four pairs of images acquired by TerraSAR-X in monostatic pursuit mode from October 2014 to February 2015 to analyze the residual phase caused by orbital errors. Since these images were acquired with a 10-second interval between the TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X satellites, the phase coherence was maintained over time. The Tarim Basin in China was selected as the study area to minimize the impact of terrain distortion. By introducing a 0.5 m error into the x, y, and z components of the satellite position vectors and creating differential interferograms, it was found that the x component’s orbital error caused the largest residual phase, with linear residual phases observed in the north-south direction. Furthermore, various baselines ranging from -29.71 to 263.21 m were used to quantitatively compare the residual phases caused by orbital errors based on the perpendicular baseline. The residual phase was similar across the four differential interferograms, with approximately 3.49 π for the x component, 0.85 π for the y component, and 1.25 π for the z component. The residual phase resulting from simulated orbital errors was effectively mitigated using a 2D quadratic model.