Estimation of the Deformation Temporal Evolution Using Airborne Differential SAR Interferometry

This paper presents airborne DInSAR results using a stack of 14 images, which were acquired by the Experimental SAR (E-SAR) system of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) during a time span of only three hours and fifteen minutes. An advanced differential technique is used to retrieve the error in the digital elevation model (DEM) and the temporal evolution of the deformation for every coherent pixel in the image. Furthermore, some modifications in the differential processing chain are included to deal with the existence of the so-called residual motion errors, which play a similar role as atmospheric artifacts in the spaceborne case. The detected deformation of a corner reflector and of some agricultural fields allows to validate the proposed techniques to measure deformation phenomena with an airborne platform.