THE PENETRATION EFFECTS ON TANDEM-X ELEVATION USING THE GNSS AND LASER ALTIMETRY MEASUREMENTS IN ANTARCTICA

Abstract. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) has been widely used in many different fields, such as geoscience, climate monitoring, security-related applications. However, over natural terrain the radar signal has the ability to penetrate the ground surface which can cause the bias in the elevation measurements. The aim of the paper is to assess the SAR signal penetration effect on the TanDEM-X absolute elevation over ice and snow covered areas and it presents the results concerning the X-band SAR signal penetration effect on dry snow areas and blue ice region. Additionally, the relationship between SAR signal penetration depth and backscattering coefficient is exploited and discussed. In this paper, two study sites, Schirmacher area and Recovery Ice Stream are selected and it is found that the general X-band SAR signal penetration depth is around 3–7 meter on dry snow area while no penetration depth is expected on the blue-ice region.