Correction of artifacts on differential SAR interferometry for the study of subsidence phenomena in urban and suburban areas

Abstract

This paper deals with the analysis and correction of artifacts on differential synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferometry applied for monitoring urban and suburban areas. Particularly, those artifacts arising from the use in interferometric processing of low accuracy acquisition geometry data are considered. To remove these artifacts, we propose a new algorithm able to estimate the acquisition geometry parameters relevant to the interferometric processing with high accuracy directly from the SAR data. In order to validate the proposed algorithm, the results obtained by applying the new technique to the study of the subsidence phenomena in Bologna (Italy) and the surrounding area are presented and compared to the results obtained by using in the interferometric processing the precise orbit data provided by the Delft Institute for Earth Oriented Space Research (DEOS).