Wind direction ambiguity removal using along-track InSAR: A case study

Paper in proceeding, 2018

The main problem in wind retrieval using SAR imagery is the lack of the wind direction information. A few methods have been proposed to extract the wind direction from SAR images. The main limitation of these methods is the 180 degrees ambiguity in the direction. Usually, an external source of wind direction is used to remove this ambiguity. This study exploits the Along-track Interferometric SAR (ATI-SAR) phase to demonstrate its usefulness to tackle this problem. A method is proposed to remove the wind direction ambiguity using the ATI-SAR phase information. This is based on the fact that the interferometric phase is related to the sea surface motion direction. Depending on the sign convention, the phase is positive/negative for advancing/receding target respectively. This effect is used to assist the wind extraction algorithm to select the most plausible direction. The results show a very good agreement with atmospheric model and visual investigation.