INFRASTRUCTURE MONITORING USING THE INTERFEROMETRIC SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR (INSAR) TECHNIQUE

Abstract. This paper focuses on the application of spaceborne radar interferometry as a tool for assisting the monitoring different types of infrastructures, including railways and highways. The Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) technique, the most advanced class of differential interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar techniques (DInSAR), is used to generate the deformation maps, including the time series and the displacement velocity for each measured persistent scatterers. The dataset considered in this work consists of 261 SAR IW-SLC images acquired by the Sentinel-1 A/B satellites, between January 2016 and September 2021, over the metropolitan area of Barcelona. The infrastructures, especially railways and highways, not only cross the cities, but also connect them crossing non-urban areas. One main technical issue of monitoring infrastructures is the low density of persistent scatterers (PS) in rural areas. To improve the density, the processing chain combines the interferograms selection based on the coherence threshold. Also, for a better point selection, the Equivalent Spatial Coherence (Omega Factor) is tested.