Copyright © 2012 Jia Tu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Spatial baseline determination is a key technology for interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) missions. Based on the intersatellite baseline measurement using dual-frequency GPS, errors induced by InSAR spatial baseline measurement are studied in detail. The classifications and characters of errors are analyzed, and models for errors are set up. The simulations of single factor and total error sources are selected to evaluate the impacts of errors on spatial baseline measurement. Single factor simulations are used to analyze the impact of the error of a single type, while total error sources simulations are used to analyze the impacts of error sources induced by GPS measurement, baseline transformation, and the entire spatial baseline measurement, respectively. Simulation results show that errors related to GPS measurement are the main error sources for the spatial baseline determination, and carrier phase noise of GPS observation and fixing error of GPS receiver antenna are main factors of errors related to GPS measurement. In addition, according to the error values listed in this paper, 1 mm level InSAR spatial baseline determination should be realized.