Ground deformations and building stability monitoring by COSMO-SkyMed PSP SAR interferometry: Results and validation with field measurements and surveys

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferometry is a powerful technology for detection and monitoring of slow ground surface movements. Extraction of this information is a complex task. The persistent scatterer pair (PSP) approach was recently proposed to overcome some limitations of standard persistent scatter interferometry. The PSP method exploits only the relative properties of neighboring points to avoid problems caused by atmosphere and in general artefacts slowly variable in space. In this work, after resuming the main ideas of the PSP method, we describe the PSP measurements obtained from high-resolution X-band COSMO-SkyMed data over Wuhan, China. Moreover, we validate these results by comparison with optical leveling measurements, geological studies, and field surveys. The outcomes confirm the validity of the PSP method and demonstrate that very accurate ground deformation and building stability measurements can be obtained from COSMO-SkyMed data. © 2016 IEEE.