What is the purpose of TropiScat?

The major objectives of the experiment were the temporal survey of the variation of the measurements in time scales ranging from diurnal, weekly, monthly, up to 12 months of observation. The measurements which have to be tracked are in order of priority:

• The temporal coherence in HH, VV and HV polarizations, at a very short rate in the order of 15 minutes, covering daily and monthly scale
• The backscattering coefficient at HH, VV and HV polarizations and in all time scales,
• 2D vertical imaging through tomographic focusing;
• the vertical distribution of temporal coherence, as obtained by comparing tomographic data taken at different times, covering time scales of minutes, days, and months.

What was the outcome of TropiScat?

The overall results of this study prove that the 6 MHz bandwidth limitation is not critical concerning P-band SAR observations of tropical forests. However, in order to have a full assessment of the end-to-end performances, different types of noise sources still need to be considered. Those are for example the ionospheric disturbances, the seasonal effects (the TropiSAR data were acquired during the dry season), the temporal decorrelation. Reversely, some of the effects prevailing in airborne data will be less significant in spaceborne data. This is the case for example of the large variation of the incidence angle across the swath, the perturbations in the flight tracts of the aircraft.

Download the TropiScat Final Report

Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.5270/esa-hmidv9d - TropiScat: "This document summarizes the work done during the TropiScat experiment in French Guiana "

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