InSAR Error Budget for Large Scale Deformation

Abstract

The capacity of SAR interferometry to measure surface deformation with accuracy of 1 mm/year or better are well known. However this is typically limited to relative motion at short distance. Thanks to several advances in SAR sensor quality, data availability, orbit determination, processing, and calibration of atmospheric delays it is now possible to achieve that accuracy even across large distances of hundreds of kilometers. In this paper we revise the main contributions to the large scale error, considering available mitigation techniques. We provide a first validation for a processing based on Sentinel-1 data, by comparing our results with GNSS stations. For future SAR's operating at lower frequencies, it is vital to consider ionospheric corrections and likely also the influence of moisture ariations in natural scatterers. The choice of processing algorithms, though typically not discussed, can also have a significant effect on the quality of the result.