Terrasar-x High Resolution Spotlight Persistent Scatterer Interferometry

The new class of meter-resolution spaceborne SAR systems (TerraSAR-X and COSMO-Skymed) offers a tremendous improvement in interferometric monitoring of urban areas and man-made infrastructure. The high resolution fits well to the inherent scale of buildings (floor height, distance of windows, etc.). In particular, Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) benefits substantially from this new data quality. Several tens or hundreds of persistent scatterers (PS) per building can for the first time be exploited for geodetic analysis from space. Many small constructive elements of buildings, like edges in facades originating from notches of windows and similar structures act as stable scatterers and thus are detected as PS at a wavelength of 3.1cm. The large amount of PS on single objects establishes the opportunity to monitor e.g. structural stress or seasonal deformation of certain objects of interest.