Unwrapping error and fading signal correction on multi-looked InSAR data

Abstract

Multi-looking, aimed at reducing data size and improving the signal-to-noise ratio, is indispensable for large-scale InSAR data processing. However, the resulting “Fading Signal” caused by multi-looking breaks the phase consistency among triplet interferograms and introduces bias into the estimated displacements. This inconsistency challenges the assumption that only unwrapping errors are involved in triplet phase closure. Therefore, untangling phase unwrapping errors and fading signals from triplet phase closure is critical to achieving more precise InSAR measurements. To address this challenge, we propose a new method that mitigates phase unwrapping errors and fading signals. This new method consists of two key steps. The first step is triplet phase closure-based stacking, which allows for the direct estimation of fading signals in each interferogram. The second step is Basis Pursuit Denoising-based unwrapping error correction, which transforms unwrapping error correction into sparse signal recovery. Through these two procedures, the new method can be seamlessly integrated into the traditional InSAR workflow. Additionally, the estimated fading signal can be directly used to derive soil moisture as a by-product of our method. Experimental results on the San Francisco Bay area demonstrate that the new method reduces velocity estimation errors by approximately 9 %–19 %, effectively addressing phase unwrapping errors and fading signals. This performance outperforms both ILP and Lasso methods, which only account for unwrapping errors in the triplet closure. Additionally, the derived by-product, soil moisture, shows strong consistency with most external soil moisture products.