Enabling the Forthcoming ROSE-L Sensor for Global Scale 3-D Earth Surface Deformation Retrieval Through a Two-Look ScanSAR Mode Configuration

This work is focused on the possibility to enhance the observation capabilities of the forthcoming Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) ROSE-L (which stands for Radar Observation System for Europe at L-band) mission [1], [2], supported by the European Space Agency (ESA) as part of the Copernicus Expansion Programme. Specifically, we propose a solution aimed at enabling the currently designed ROSE-L system for a two-look ScanSAR mode configuration, without impairing key parameters, namely, the azimuth resolution and the range swath, of the original system, which is instead designed to basically achieve only a one-look ScanSAR mode configuration. In particular, following the analysis presented in [3], we propose to properly shape the radiated azimuth beam, doubling its width, without upsetting the original design of the ROSE-L radar antenna and taking advantage of the degrees of freedom offered by its current layout. The proposed ROSE-L two-look ScanSAR mode configuration presents several valuable advantages in different applications, among which we focus on the possibility to retrieve, at global scale and without azimuth gaps, the North-South deformation components of the displacement phenomena occurred on the ground through the so called Burst overlap interferometry technique [4].     [1] M. Zimmermanns and C. Roemer, “Copernicus HPCM: ROSE-L SAR Instrument and Performance Overview,” in EUSAR 2022; 14th European Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar, Leipzig, Germany, 2022, pp. 1-6. [2] M. Davidson and R. Furnell, “ROSE-L: Copernicus L-Band SAR Mission,” in IGARSS 2021; IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, Brussels, Belgium, 2021, pp. 872-873. [3] S. Perna, F. Longo, S. Zoffoli, M. Davidson, L. Lannini and R. Lanari, “ A conceptual performance study on a two-look ScanSAR mode configuration for the forthcoming ROSE-L mission,” in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, doi: 10.1109/TGRS.2023.3344537. [4] R. Grandin, E. Klein, M. Métois, C. Vigny, “Three-dimensional displacement field of the 2015 8.3 Illapel earthquake (Chile) from across- and along-track Sentinel-1 TOPS interferometry,” in Geophys.Res. Lett., vol. 43, pp. 2552-2561, 2016.