Gecoris

An open-source toolbox for analyzing time series of corner reflectors in insar geodesy

Journal Article (2021)
Author(s)

Richard Czikhardt (Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava)

Hans van der Marel (TU Delft - Mathematical Geodesy and Positioning)

Juraj Papco (Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava)

DOI related publication
https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13050926 Final published version
More Info
expand_more
Publication Year
2021
Language
English
Issue number
5
Volume number
13
Article number
926
Pages (from-to)
1-26
Downloads counter
532
Collections
Institutional Repository
Reuse Rights

Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.

Abstract

Artificial radar reflectors, such as corner reflectors or transponders, are commonly used for radiometric and geometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensor calibration, SAR interferometry (InSAR) applications over areas with few natural coherent scatterers, and InSAR datum connection and geodetic integration. Despite the current abundance of regular SAR time series, no free and open-source software (FOSS) dedicated to analyzing SAR time series of artificial radar reflectors exists. In this paper, we present a FOSS Python toolbox for efficient and automatic estimation of: (i) the clutter level of a particular site before a corner reflector installation, (ii) the Radar Cross Section (RCS) to track a corner reflector’s performance and detect outliers, for example, due to damage or debris accumulation, (iii) the Signal-to-Clutter Ratio (SCR) to predict the positioning precision and the InSAR phase variance, (iv) the InSAR displacement time series of a corner reflector network. We use the toolbox to analyze Sentinel-1 SAR time series of the network of 23 corner reflectors for InSAR monitoring of landslides in Slovakia.