Statistical description of tropospheric delay for InSAR : Overview and a new model

This paper focuses on statistical modeling of water vapor fluctuations for InSAR. The structure function and power spectral density approaches are reviewed, summarizing their assumptions and results. The linking equations between these modeling techniques are reported. A structure function model of zenith tropospheric propagation delay is then derived from a two-regime power spectral density function presented in literature.

The novelty lies in the fact that a closed form expression is derived and a free model parameter is allowed, which may be tuned to available measurements or, in the absence of these, to atmospheric statistics. The latter approach is used to compare the derived model with previously published results.