川藏铁路沿线Sentinel-1 影像几何畸变与 升降轨适宜性定量分析.

Objectives: The Sichuan-Tibet railway is not only a state key project in China, but also the most difficult super project in railway construction history due to the most complex terrain and the active geological structure. Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) has proved to be a critical tool for detecting and monitoring geohazards because of its wide coverage, high precision, and high efficiency. However, due to its side-looking geometry, InSAR faces serious geometric distortions in mountainous areas, particularly in extremely steep high mountain and gorge areas along the Sichuan-Tibet railway. Methods: Utilizing the full open-access Sentinel⁃1 data, which has the wide coverage and a short revisiting time, we carry out satellite radar geometric distortion and feasibility analyses along the Sichuan-Tibet railway. Taking into account synthetic aperture radar(SAR) imaging geometry, the variations of the incidence angles across the whole SAR image, and the passive geometric distortions, we present an integrated approach to accurately determine the areas with SAR geometric distortions. Results: Our results for Sentinel-1 data show that the areas with geometric distortions for observations with a single-orbit (i.e. ascending or descending) reach 31%—35% along the Sichuan-Tibet railway, whilst the geometric distortion areas reduce to 1.5% for observations with both ascending and descending orbits; furthermore, about 35% of the whole area is suitable for joint analyses with both ascending and descending observations. Conclusions: The quantitative result also reveals the feasibility to use the Sentinel-1 data to detect and monitor geohazards along the Sichuan-Tibet railway from the perspective of geometric distortions. It can not only improve the overall understanding of the applicability of Sentinel-1 based InSAR and the InSAR results interpretation in this area, but also provide a guideline for efficiently selecting other satellite SAR datasets for detecting and monitoring geological disasters along the Sichuan-Tibet railway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]