Coherent and Incoherent Clutter Reduction Techniques to Sound Ice from High Altitudes

Inhalt:
Fine-resolution in three dimensions is required to reduce strong surface clutter encountered in sounding and imaging polar ice sheets from highaltitudes. We obtained fine range and along-track resolutions by choosing radar operation frequency and bandwidth and by synthesizing a long aperture with the forward motion of aircraft, respectively. In the cross-track dimension, we developed coherent and incoherent clutter reduction algorithms to effectively reduce cross-track clutter from data collected with limited-size antenna arrays. In this paper, we describe the radars and algorithms and report the successful high-altitude measurements of thin and thick low-loss ice over the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.