First polarimetric PSI ground deformation monitoring results with RCM quad-pol data

Abstract

Launched in June 2019, the Radarsat constellation mission (RCM) has the ability to acquire quad-pol polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) data globally. By applying polarimetric optimization on interferograms with PolSAR images, the polarimetric persistent interferometry techniques can achieve ground deformation results better than persistent scatter InSAR (PSI). However, to the best of our knowledge, there are very few published studies about RCM PSI applications, and the polarimetric PSI (PolPSI) ones have never been reported. This letter reports for the first time the PolPSI results with the quad-pol RCM data over an urban area. The quality of interferometric phases can be significantly improved with the polarimetric optimizations, resulting in better ground deformation monitoring results with PolPSI than with PSI. Very similar ground deformation has been retrieved with Sentinel-1 data over the same area, where more details are provided with the RCM data, validating the correctness of the RCM (Po)PSI results. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of this new synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite constellation on PSI and PolPSI applications.

This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 42474018; in part by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under Grant 2025ZDPYQB1007; in part by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation under Grant 2023T160685 and Grant 2020M671646; in part by Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (MICIU)/Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) /10.13039/501100011033 through European Regional Development Fund Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER), Union Europea (UE), under Project PID2024-161188OB-C21; in part by the Young Elite Scientists Sponsorship Program by China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) under Grant 2023QNRC001-YESS20230599; and in part by the DRAGON6 call financed by European Space Agency (ESA) and Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MOST) under Project 95436.

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Postprint (author's final draft)