Orbital error modeling and analysis of spaceborne InSAR

Spaceborne synthetic aperture radar interferometry is a key earth observation technique for large-area deformation monitoring. Measurements can be biased by error originating from different sources. Satellite orbital error affects interferograms in the form of an almost linear signal. The commonly used methods to mitigate the orbital error are to calculate the residual baseline error by the Fast Fourier Transform on the residual phase or to fit it with the quadratic surface. These two methods are applicable in most cases, but do not apply in the presence of a large-scale deformation signal that has similar spatial characteristics, such as tectonic movement or tides. Based on the current research on modeling and analysis of baseline error, this paper realized the orbital error network adjustment of Envisat ASAR data in Los Angeles area according to the principle of network adjustment. For quality control on the network level, iterative data snooping has been used, and the result proved its capability to detect and reject outliers.