A Novel Analysis Method of Deformation Accuracy
for Spaceborne PS-DInSAR
Song Chen
School of Electronics & Information Engineering, Beihang
University
Beijing, China
chensong181@buaa.edu.cn
Huaping Xu
School of Electronics & Information Engineering, Beihang
University
Beijing, China
xuhuaping @ buaa.edu.cn
Chunsheng Li
School of Electronics & Information Engineering, Beihang
University
Beijing, China
lichunsheng @ buaa.edu.cn
Jianlong Li
School of Electronics & Information Engineering, Beihang
University
Beijing, China
lijianlong @ buaa.edu.cn
Wei Li
State Key Laboratory of Geo-Information Engineering,
Xi’an Institute of Surveying and Mapping
Xi’an, China
State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment
DynamicsˈSecond Institute of Oceanography, SOA
Hangzhou, China
Shanghai Institute of Satellite Engineering
Shanghai, China
liwei20rth@139.com
Abstract—Spaceborne PS-DInSAR is an advanced remote
sensing technology for achiving global surface deformation
measurement, it has a series of advantages such as all time and
weather, low cost, high deformation accuracy and so on. This
paper focuses on the deformation accuracy of PS-DInSAR. Based
on basic principle of spaceborne DInSAR, this paper introduces
the principle of PS-DInSAR, and sets up the mathematical model
of PS-DInSAR deformation accuracy, deduces the accuracy
model of PS-DInSAR deformation detection by a novel method.
Besides, PS-DInSAR deformation accuracy is analyzed by
simulation. The research of this paper has guiding significance
for the analysis of spaceborne PS-DInSAR overall performance.
Index Terms—DInSAR; PS; Deformation Accuracy;
Spaceborne
I. INTRODUCTION
Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is an advanced and well-
known technology for remote sensing. It has scientific and
commercial applications in several domains. Spaceborne SAR
has a series of advantages such as all time, all weather, global
covering, image continuity, low cost, good prospects, and so
on. In the past decades, an increasing interest has arisen to use
Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) to get high
accuracy global digital elevation model (DEM). Spaceborne
differential interferometric synthetic aperture radar (DInSAR)
is developed from InSAR and used to detect the line of sight
(LOS) motion and topography. Its deformation accuracy can
reach cm level even mm level. DInSAR is playing very
important roles on the missions of surface elevation and
deformation measurement in areas such as volcanic activity,
earthquake, continental plates drift, forest monitoring, surface
subsidence and so on. DInSAR becomes one of the most
important research topics of SAR application.
Traditionally, there are two methods for DInSAR, the two-
pass differential interferometric processing method and the
three-pass differential interferometric processing method. The
first method is studied by Massonnet [1] [2]. He used two
SAR images and an interferometric digital elevation model to
get LOS crustal deformations. The second method is studied
by Zebker [3]. He got LOS crustal deformations directly from
three SAR images. Both of them can get cm level of the
accuracy. More recently, there has been an activity by some
researchers applying the capabilities of PS-DInSAR to the
study of surface deformation. Particularly, the PS-DInSAR
developed quickly by permanent scatterer (PS) technique [4].
The accuracy of surface deformation about PS-DInSAR is
one of the most interesting fields for lots of researchers. There
are some studies about deformation accuracy analysis of PS-
DInSAR. Rocca made some research about deformation
accuracy [5] with two steps. First, he proposed that the
N×(Ní1)/2 interferograms were formed out of N acquisitions,
second he used statistics of the interferograms to derive the
optimal linear estimator of the parameters of interest under the
small phase approximation. The same research also has been
done by Monti Guarnieri[6][7]. Differently, he directly
deduced Cramér–Rao bound of deformation accuracy by SAR
images, rather than from the N (N í1)/2 interferograms.
978-1-4799-8633-0/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE