ALOS Interferometry  - David Sandwell and Meng Wei - August 18, 2006

1) What is ALOS?

2) Why is L-Band better than C-band?

3) Is PALSAR interferometry possible?

4) Where can I find new results?

5) Where can I get a sample L1.0 data set?   Level 1.0 Documentation?

6) What else is special about PALSAR?

7) What is the current coverage along the San Andreas Fault?

8) What is the data acquisition plan for North America?

9) How and when can I get more data?  What about precise orbits?

10) What special software will be needed?

11) Software developments at SIO?

Send an e-mail if you have other questions.








3) Is PALSAR interferometry possible?  YES

As part of our calibration and validation effort with JAXA, they delivered an interferometric pair over the Southern San Andreas fault area.  This pair is from a descending pass in fine beam standard, 34.3 look angle collected on June 8 and July 24. This is the first and only interferogram that we attempted and it seems to have better coherence and have higher resolution than a typical ERS scene.  The phase (superimposed on amplitude of interferogram) and a zoom of the phase show promising results although there is an additional software improvement required to account for the 1060-m baseline for this pair.  The details of the reference and repeat parameter files provide the necessary SAR and InSAR processing parameters. To do:



6) What else is special about PALSAR?

7) What is the current coverage along the San Andreas Fault?

This depends a lot on the location.  I did two 1-degree searches of FBS data only for the time period June 1, 2006 to August 11, 2006.  The San Francisco area has only 3 scenes while the Pinon area has 40 scenes.  The higher number at Pinon is because they make every acquisition over the calibration/validation sites.

8) What is the data acquisition plan for North America?

9) How and when can I get more data?  What about precise orbits?

10) What special software will be needed?

11) Software developments at SIO?   We maintain 5 modules to do the basic InSAR processing (SIOSAR).  These include: