Title
On Closure Phase and Systematic Bias in Multilooked SAR Interferometry
Abstract
In this article, we investigate the link between the closure phase and the observed systematic bias in deformation modeling with multilooked SAR interferometry. Multilooking or spatial averaging is commonly used to reduce stochastic noise over a neighborhood of distributed scatterers in interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) measurements. However, multilooking may break consistency among a triplet of interferometric phases formed from three acquisitions leading to a residual phase error called closure phase. Understanding the cause of closure phase in multilooked InSAR measurements and the impact of closure phase errors on the performance of InSAR time-series algorithms is crucial for quantifying the uncertainty of ground displacement time series derived from InSAR measurements. We develop a model that consistently explains both closure phase and systematic bias in multilooked interferometric measurements. We show that nonzero closure phase can be an indicator of temporally inconsistent physical processes that alter both phase and amplitude of interferometric measurements. We propose a method to estimate the systematic bias in the InSAR time series with generalized closure phase measurements. We validate our model with a case study in Barstow-Bristol Trough, CA, USA. We find systematic differences on the order of cm/year between InSAR time-series results using subsets of varying maximum temporal baselines. We show that these biases can be identified and accounted for.
Year
DOI
Venue
2022
10.1109/TGRS.2022.3167648
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Phase measurement, Synthetic aperture radar, Systematics, Extraterrestrial measurements, Strain, Geologic measurements, Nonhomogeneous media, Closure phase, interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR), InSAR time series, phase consistency, systematic bias
Journal
60
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
0196-2892
0
0.34
References 
Authors
0
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Yujie Zheng100.34
Heresh Fattahi200.68
Piyush Agram300.68
Mark Simons4113.83
PAUL A. ROSEN525537.73