A Novel Deformation Extraction Approach for Sub-Band InSAR and Its Application in Large-Scale Surface Mining Subsidence Monitoring

Abstract

Differential synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) is widely used to monitor ground surface deformation due to its wide coverage and high accuracy. However, the large-scale and rapid deformation that occurs in mining areas often leads to densely spaced interference fringes, thus, severely limiting the applicability of D-InSAR in mining subsidence monitoring. Sub-band InSAR can reduce phase gradients in interferograms by increasing the simulated wavelength, thereby characterising large-scale surface deformations. Nonetheless, accurate registration between non-overlapping sub-band images with conventional sub-band InSAR is challenging. Therefore, our study proposed a new sub-band InSAR deformation extraction method, based on raw full-bandwidth single-look complex image pair registration data to facilitate sub-band interferometric processing. Simulations under noiseless conditions demonstrated that the maximum difference between the sub-band InSAR-monitored results and real surface deformations was 26 mm (1.86% of maximum vertical deformation), which theoretically meets the requirements for mining subsidence monitoring. However, when modelling dynamic deformation with noise, the sub-band InSAR-simulated wavelength could not be optimised for surface deformation due to the limitation in current SAR satellite bandwidths, which resulted in significantly noisy and undistinguishable interference fringes. Nonetheless, this method could still be advantageous in high-coherence regions where surface deformation exceeds 1/5th of the simulated wavelength.