ANALYSIS OF X-BAND VERY HIGH RESOLUTION PERSISTENT SCATTERER INTERFEROMETRY DATA OVER URBAN AREAS

Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) is a satellite-based Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) remote sensing technique used to measure and monitor land deformation from a stack of interferometric SAR images. This work concerns X-band PSI and, in particular, PSI based on very high resolution (VHR) StripMap CosmoSkyMed and TerraSAR-X SAR imagery. In fact, it mainly focuses on the technical aspects of deformation measurement and monitoring over urban areas. A key technical aspect analysed in this paper is the thermal expansion component of PSI observations, which is a result of temperature differences in the imaged area between SAR acquisitions. This component of PSI observations is particularly important in the urban environment. This is an interesting feature of PSI, which can be surely used to illustrate the high sensitivity of X-band PSI to very subtle displacements. Thermal expansion can have a strong impact on the PSI products, especially on the deformation velocity maps and deformation time series, if not properly handled during the PSI data processing and analysis, and a comprehensive discussion of this aspect will be provided in this paper. The importance of thermal expansion is related to the fact that the PSI analyses are often performed using limited stacks of images, which may cover a limited time period, e.g. several months only. These two factors (limited number of images and short period) make the impact of a non-modelled thermal expansion particularly critical. This issue will be illustrated considering different case studies based on TerraSAR-X and CosmoSkyMed PSI data. Besides, an extended PSI model which alleviates this problem will be described and case studies from the Barcelona metropolitan area will demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy

URBAN MONITORING BASED ON SENTINEL-1 DATA USING PERMANENT SCATTERER INTERFEROMETRY AND SAR TOMOGRAPHY

A lot of research and development has been devoted to the exploitation of satellite SAR images for deformation measurement and monitoring purposes since Differential Interferometric Synthetic Apertura Radar (InSAR) was first described in 1989. In this work, we consider two main classes of advanced DInSAR techniques: Persistent Scatterer Interferometry and Tomographic SAR. Both techniques make use of multiple SAR images acquired over the same site and advanced procedures to separate the deformation component from the other phase components, such as the residual topographic component, the atmospheric component, the thermal expansion component and the phase noise. TomoSAR offers the advantage of detecting either single scatterers presenting stable proprieties over time (Persistent Scatterers) and multiple scatterers interfering within the same range-azimuth resolution cell, a significant improvement for urban areas monitoring. This paper addresses a preliminary inter-comparison of the results of both techniques, for a test site located in the metropolitan area of Barcelona (Spain), where interferometric Sentinel-1 data were analysed

CHANGE DETECTION AND DYNAMIC ANALYSIS BASED ON REMOTE SENSING IMAGES

A radar uses the time elapsed between the transmission and reception of an electromagnetic waveform to locate targets present in the illuminated area. Different objects will reflect the radiation with different intensities and phase. The signal provided by standard radar is a profile of the intensity backscattered from the scene as a function of the distance. The resolution, i.e. the capability to distinguish different targets, is related to instrumental parameters and, for conventional radar, is in the range of tens of centimetres. The elementary sampling volume of a radar measurement is usually called radar bin. A radar image can be obtained when an azimuth and a range resolution is available, and this can be attained in different ways: performing a mechanical scanning of the antenna, the most familiar mode used for surveillance, meteorological radar etc, or modifying its spatial features by changing the characteristics of the radiated signal or finally through a specific processing of the acquired data, as in the case of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). In this paper only 1D data without any cross range resolution are used. The vibration of a target corresponds to a small and rapid variation of the radar-target distance to which the phase of the received signal is related. Coherent radar is able to provide measurements of the phase variation along time exploiting the interferometric technique. The received radar signals permits to retrieve distance variations of the observed objects in the order of small fractions of the transmitted wavelength, by comparing the phase of signals acquired at different times. Use a short span bridge as a test-bed this study investigates the actual capability of a Real Aperture Radar (RAR) interferometer to detect the natural vibration caused by wind or pass pedestrians. It is found that RAR can pick up bridge displacements of a few tens of μm and detect a wide range of vibrations

Exploitation of the full potential of PSI data for subsidence monitoring

Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) is a remote sensing technique used to measure and monitor land deformation from a stack of interferometric SAR images. The main products that can be derived using the PSI technique are the deformation maps and the time series of deformation. In this paper, an approach to apply the PSI technique to a stack of Sentinel-1 images is described. Moreover, the problems encountered during the processing are detailed and an explanation of how they were dealt with is provided. Finally, Sentinel-1 deformation maps and time series obtained over the metropolitan area of Mexico DF are shown

ANALYSIS OF X-BAND VERY HIGH RESOLUTION PERSISTENT SCATTERER INTERFEROMETRY DATA OVER URBAN AREAS

Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) is a satellite-based Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) remote sensing technique used to measure and monitor land deformation from a stack of interferometric SAR images. This work concerns X-band PSI and, in particular, PSI based on very high resolution (VHR) StripMap CosmoSkyMed and TerraSAR-X SAR imagery. In fact, it mainly focuses on the technical aspects of deformation measurement and monitoring over urban areas. A key technical aspect analysed in this paper is the thermal expansion component of PSI observations, which is a result of temperature differences in the imaged area between SAR acquisitions. This component of PSI observations is particularly important in the urban environment. This is an interesting feature of PSI, which can be surely used to illustrate the high sensitivity of X-band PSI to very subtle displacements. Thermal expansion can have a strong impact on the PSI products, especially on the deformation velocity maps and deformation time series, if not properly handled during the PSI data processing and analysis, and a comprehensive discussion of this aspect will be provided in this paper. The importance of thermal expansion is related to the fact that the PSI analyses are often performed using limited stacks of images, which may cover a limited time period, e.g. several months only. These two factors (limited number of images and short period) make the impact of a non-modelled thermal expansion particularly critical. This issue will be illustrated considering different case studies based on TerraSAR-X and CosmoSkyMed PSI data. Besides, an extended PSI model which alleviates this problem will be described and case studies from the Barcelona metropolitan area will demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy