Mapping Aurora Activity with SAR - A Case Study

Ionospheric propagation effects can have significant impact on the signal properties of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems and they increase with decreasing carrier frequency. Recently, theoretical analyzes of ionospheric distortions in low-frequency SAR signals have indicated a multitude effects that are likely to affect the quality of SAR, interferometric SAR (InSAR), and polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) data (see [1-5]). Faraday rotation, relative range shifts, internal deformations of the image amplitude, range and azimuth blurring, and interferometric phase errors are some of the most significant effects that need to be considered. While the theory presented in the papers is consistent, direct proof and verification of ionospheric effects in SAR data is still only partly available.