Earth-Science Reviews 133 (2014) 1–17

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Earth-Science Reviews
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Review

Resolving three-dimensional surface displacements from InSAR

measurements: A review
J. Hu a, Z.W. Li a,⁎, X.L. Ding b, J.J. Zhu a, L. Zhang b, Q. Sun a
a
School of Geosciences and Info-Physics, Central South University, Changsha 410083, Hunan, China
b
Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: One-dimensional measurement along the Line-Of-Sight (LOS) direction has greatly limited the capability of
Received 15 August 2013 InSAR technique in the investigation of surface displacements and their dynamics. In recent years, great efforts
Accepted 18 February 2014 have been made to resolve complete three-dimensional (3-D) displacements from InSAR measurements. This
Available online 3 March 2014
contribution is intended to provide a systematic review of the progress achieved in this field. Based on an analysis
of the InSAR LOS measurements, we first cover two commonly used techniques, i.e., Offset-Tracking and multi-
Keywords:
Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar
aperture InSAR (MAI), with which the surface displacement in the azimuth direction can be measured together
(InSAR) with the LOS displacement. Several methods for mapping 3-D displacements using InSAR measurements are sub-
Line-Of-Sight (LOS) sequently presented and categorized into three groups: (i) combination of multi-pass LOS and azimuth measure-
Three-dimensional (3-D) displacements ments; (ii) integration of InSAR and GPS data; and (iii) prior information assisted approaches. The strengths and
Offset-Tracking weaknesses of each method are analyzed to show the applicability of each method to specific 3-D displacement
Multi-aperture InSAR (MAI) mapping cases, in hope to provide a useful guidance in choosing a suitable approach accordingly. Finally, sugges-
Multi-pass tions for resolving the challenging issues and outlook of future research are given.
© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. One-dimensional measurements of InSAR and their limitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1. D-InSAR and MT-InSAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1.1. D-InSAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1.2. MT-InSAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2. The limitation of the 1-D InSAR LOS measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Derivation of two-dimensional displacement maps from a single interferometric pair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.1. Offset-Tracking technique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.2. Multi-aperture InSAR technique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4. Generation of three-dimensional displacement maps based on InSAR measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.1. Combination of multi-pass LOS and azimuth measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.1.1. Fusion of D-InSAR and Offset-Tracking measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.1.2. Fusion of D-InSAR and MAI measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.1.3. Utilization of Offset-Tracking measurements only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.2. Integration of InSAR and GPS data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.3. Prior information assisted approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.3.1. Surface-parallel flow assumption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.3.2. Neglect of the N–S displacement component . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5. Discussions and recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.1. Current challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.1.1. Mapping significant ground movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.1.2. Mapping slow surface deformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.1.3. Correcting tropospheric and ionospheric artifacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

⁎ Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +86 731 88830573.

E-mail address: zwli@csu.edu.cn (Z.W. Li).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2014.02.005
0012-8252/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
2 J. Hu et al. / Earth-Science Reviews 133 (2014) 1–17

5.2. Outlook of future developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

5.2.1. Towards more subtle and spatially detailed 3-D displacement measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.2.2. Towards 3-D time series displacement measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

1. Introduction but now reduced to several days with high-resolution satellites

Space-borne Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR, also
abbreviated as IFSAR or ISAR) is an advanced geodetic tool, featured
by its all-day and all-weather working capabilities, wide spatial cover-
age, fine spatial resolution, high measurement precision and no need
for ground instrumentation. By exploiting the phase differences be-
tween two SAR images acquired over the same area but different
times, InSAR can be used to construct Digital Elevation Model (DEM)
(Zebker and Goldstein, 1986) and/or measure the ground movement
occurred during the time interval (Gabriel et al., 1989). For mapping
ground movement, InSAR technology is usually referred to as differen-
tial InSAR (D-InSAR). The ground movements can be caused by inter-,
co- and post-earthquake deformations (Massonnet et al., 1993;
JÓnsson et al., 2003; Wright et al., 2004a), glacier motion (Goldstein
et al., 1993), volcanic eruption (Wicks et al., 1998), landslide (Hilley
et al., 2004), and induced by human activities like underground mining
(Carnec and Delacourt, 2000), groundwater extraction (Bawden et al.,
2004), and land reclamation (Ding et al., 2004).
Although widespread applications have been conducted in the area of
Earth observation, the conventional D-InSAR technology still has at least
four significant limitations, i.e., low temporal resolution, spatial–temporal
decorrelation (Zebker and Villasenor, 1992), signal contamination due to
troposphere/ionosphere (Hanssen, 2001) and one-dimensional (1-D)
measurements in the Line-Of-Sight (LOS) direction (Wright et al.,
2004b). The temporal resolution of D-InSAR measurements depends on
the revisiting periods of the SAR satellites, which are approximately a
month with moderate-resolution satellites (e.g., 24 days for RADARSAT-
1, 35 days for ERS-1/2 and ENVISAT, and 46 days for JERS-1 and ALOS),
(e.g., 11 days for TerraSAR-X, and 1–16 days for COSMO-SkyMed).
Table 1 gives the specifications of well-known SAR satellite missions.
D-InSAR allows the detections of surface changes with the precision
of centimeter and even millimeter theoretically (Bamler and Hartl,
1998). However, the achievable precision in practice is subject to
spatial–temporal decorrelation and atmospheric delays. In recent
decade, dedicated researchers have been actively pursuing methods
to overcome these two limitations by developing a series of multi-
temporal InSAR (MT-InSAR) algorithms such as Permanent Scatterer
Interferometry (PSI) (Ferretti et al., 2000, 2001), Small BAseline Subsets
(SBAS) (Berardino et al., 2002; Lanari et al., 2004), Coherent Point Tar-
get (CPT) (Mora et al., 2003), Interferometric Point Target Analysis
(IPTA) (Werner et al., 2003), Spatio-Temporal Unwrapping Network
(STUN) (Kampes and Hanssen, 2004), Stanford Method for Persistent
Scatterers (StaMPS) (Hooper et al., 2007; Hooper, 2008), and Tempo-
rarily Coherent Points (TCP) (Zhang et al., 2011a,b, 2012), which have
the potential to produce displacement measurements with promising
accuracy and resolution. However, there still remained a lack of satisfac-
tory ways to overcome the limitation of 1-D LOS measurements.
The side-looking geometry of SAR sensor and its generally low
incidence angle cause the InSAR LOS measurement most sensitive to
ground uplift or subsidence. The usual case to estimate the vertical
ground deformation is to divide the InSAR LOS measurement by the co-
sine of the incidence angle assuming that no horizontal ground motion
occurred (Galloway et al., 1998; Amelung et al., 1999; Hung et al., 2011).
However, this poor assumption may cause mis-interpretation of the ac-
tual ground motion that generally occurs in both vertical and horizontal
directions. Moreover, if the surface displacement were in the azimuth

Table 1
Specifications of well-known SAR satellite missions.

Satellite mission Mission life span Repeat cycle Wavelength/band Swath width Resolution (azimuth × range) Incidence angle Orbital inclination

SEASAT 6/1978–10/1978 17 days 23.5 cm/L-band 100 km 25 m × 25 m 20°–26° 108.0°

ERS-1 7/1991–3/2000 35, 3, 168 days 5.66 cm/C-band 100 km 30 m × 30 m 20°–26° 98.52°
JERS-1 2/1992–10/1998 44 days 23.5 cm/L-band 75 km 18 m × 18 m 35° 97.7°
ERS-2 4/1995–9/2011 35, 3 days 5.66 cm/C-band 100 km 30 m × 30 m 20°–26° 98.52°
RADARSAT-1 11/1995–3/2013 24 days 5.66 cm/ (Fine) 50 km 9 m × (8, 9) m 37°–47° 98.6°
C-band (Standard) 100 km 28 m × (21–27) m 20°–49°
(ScanSAR) 500 km 28 m × (23, 27, 35) m 20°–45°
ENVISAT 3/2002–4/2012 35, 30 days 5.63 cm/C-band (AP mode) 58–110 km 30 m × (30–150) m 15°–45° 98.55°
(Image) 58–110 km 30 m × (30–150) m 15°–45°
(Wave) 5 km 10 m × 10 m 15°–45°
(GM) 405 km 1 km × 1 km 17°–42°
(WS) 405 km 150 m × 150 m 17°–42°
ALOS 1/2006–5/2011 46 days 23.6 cm/L-band (Single/dual pol.) 70 km 10 m × (7, 14) m 8°–60° 98.2°
(quad-pol.) 30 km 10 m × 24 m 8°–30°
(ScanSAR) 350 km 100 m × 100 m 18°–43°
RADARSAT-2 12/2007–present 24 days 5.55 cm/C-band (Spotlight) 20 km 0.8 m × (2.1–3.3) m 20°–49° 98.6°
(Stripmap) 20–150 km (3–25.6) m × (2.5–42.8) m 20°–60°
(ScanSAR) 300–500 km (46–113) m × (43–183) m 20°–49°
TerraSAR-X 6/2007–present 11 days 3.11 cm/X-band (HR Spotlight) 10 km 1 m × (1.5–3.5) m 20°–55° 97.4°
(Spotlight) 10 km 2 m × (1.5–3.5) m 20°–55°
(Stripmap) 30 km 3 m × (3–6) m 20°–45°
(ScanSAR) 100 km 26 m × 16 m 20°–45°
COSMO-SkyMed 6/2007–present 1,4,5,7,8,9,12,16 days 3.12 cm/X-band (Spotlight) 10 km 1m×1m 25°–50° 97.9°
(Stripmap) 30–40 km 3–15 m 25°–50°
(ScanSAR) 100–200 km 30–100 m 25°–50°
TanDEM-X 6/2010–present 11 days 3.11 cm/X-band (HR Spotlight) 10 km 1 m × (1.5–3.5) m 20°–55° 97.4°
(Spotlight) 10 km 2 m × (1.5–3.5) m 20°–55°
(Stripmap) 30 km 3 m × (3–6) m 20°–45°
(ScanSAR) 100 km 26 m × 16 m 20°–45°
 J. Hu et al. / Earth-Science Reviews 133 (2014) 1–17
direction, which is perpendicular to the LOS direction, it may be
completely missed from the InSAR LOS measurement.
A large number of researches have been carried out in order to over-
come the limitation of the 1-D LOS measurements. The most straightfor-
ward approach is the combination of multiple InSAR LOS measurements
from different viewing geometries. For instance, Gray (2011) exploited
three different LOS displacements from the extra-low and extra-high
beams of RADARSAT-2 to estimate full 3-D movement of the Henrietta
Nesmith Glacier. However, this is a very rare case, confined only to the
regions whose latitudes are greater than around 80°. For most areas,
the practical approach to resolve the full 3-D surface displacement
vectors is merging InSAR LOS measurements together with other
observations, which can be retrieved from homogenous data (i.e., SAR
acquisitions) or heterogeneous data (e.g., GPS data).
This paper focuses on summarizing the most recent development of
the approaches that exploit InSAR measurements to retrieve 3-D surface
displacements. Explicitly, the following questions are addressed in this
review: (i) what are the well developed methods for resolving 3-D
displacements based on InSAR? (ii) what technique should be chosen
for certain type of ground movement? and (iii) toward what direction
should the future InSAR 3-D displacement mapping go?
The paper is organized as follows. A brief introduction of the InSAR
LOS measurements is first given in Section 2. Also analyzed in this
section are the limitations of the 1-D measurements. In Section 3,
we present the principles and examples of deriving two-dimensional
(2-D) surface displacements from single interferometric pair, including
Offset-Tracking and multi-aperture InSAR (MAI) techniques. Subse-
quently, the commonly used approaches developed for generating full
3-D displacement maps based on InSAR measurements are reviewed
in detail in Section 4. Based on an evaluation of the existing 3-D
displacements approaches, we comment on the primary issues of the
argument and provide our perspectives on its future development in
Section 5. Finally, some concluding remarks are given.
2. One-dimensional measurements of InSAR and their limitation
2.1. D-InSAR and MT-InSAR
2.1.1. D-InSAR
InSAR is the combination of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and the
interferometry technology. SAR is an active microwave imaging system
that records the complex signal in the planar images, which are usually
shown in terms of amplitude and phase. Amplitude reflects the strength
Fig. 1. The basic processing flow of D-InSAR.
3
of electromagnetic scattering from the Earth surface. Phase can be
exploited to measure the distance between the sensor and target, and
to extract topographic height and/or ground deformation under inter-
ferometric scheme. Hereinafter we directly come to the repeat-pass
InSAR paradigm. For the details of the SAR principles, we refer
the readers to Kovaly (1976), Elachi (1988), and Curlander and
McDonough (1991).
In the repeat-pass InSAR paradigm, two Single-Look Complex (SLC)
SAR acquisitions that image the same area with very analogous observa-
tion geometry are co-registered to form an interferogram (Gens and van
Genderen, 1996). The interferogram is actually pixel-by-pixel measure-
ment of interferometric phase that contains the contributions from
differential topographic height and differential ground deformation
with respect to the reference pixel. However, the spatial and temporal
disparities between the two SAR images will affect the interferometric
phase and thus result in phase noise that can obscure desirable signals.
The interferometric phase Δφint is then (Hanssen, 2001)
4π 4π B⊥ ε 4π
Δφint ¼ B þ þ d þ Δφatmo þ Δφnoise þ 2πk ð1Þ
λ ∥ λ R0 sinθ λ los
where λ is the radar wavelength. R0 is the slant range from the sensor to
the target pixel. θ is the incidence angle. B∥ and B⊥ are the parallel and
perpendicular components of the orbit separation of the SAR image
pair (i.e., baseline), respectively. The first term in the right side of
Eq. (1) represents the flat-Earth phase component, which is induced
by the parallel baseline of the SAR image pair, and is a function of the
pixel position regardless of topographic height. The second term repre-
sents the topographic phase component. ε is the topographic height of
the target pixel. The third term represents the deformation phase com-
ponent. dlos is the ground deformation along the LOS direction occurred
in the time interval of the SAR image pair. Δφatmo and Δφnoise are the at-
mospheric phase and the decorrelation noise, respectively. The last term
represents the phase of integer cycles and k is the integer ambiguity.
For the D-InSAR technique that aims to detect ground deformation,
all the aforementioned components except dlos are required to be
resolved or removed in advance. The first two terms in Eq. (1) can be es-
timated when high precision baseline and topography are provided. The
last two terms in Eq. (1) can be suppressed by the well developed filter-
ing (e.g., Goldstein and Werner, 1998; Lee et al., 1998; Baran et al., 2003;
Li et al., 2008) and unwrapping methods (e.g., Goldstein et al., 1988;
Costantini, 1999; Chen and Zebker, 2002). If the term of Δφatmo
could be ignored for the study area or removed by external data, the
4 J. Hu et al. / Earth-Science Reviews 133 (2014) 1–17

ground deformation is readily resolved from the interferometric phase 2.2. The limitation of the 1-D InSAR LOS measurements
(Massonnet and Feigl, 1998; Hanssen, 2001). Fig. 1 exhibits the basic
processing flow of the D-InSAR technique. Note that the topographic Since the SAR images employed in D-InSAR or MT-InSAR are ac-
components can be removed by external DEM (2-Pass) or by motionless quired in a single track, the InSAR measurements are limited to the
SAR pair (3- or 4-Pass). In addition, the cross-correlation product, i.e., LOS direction. By exploiting the multiple InSAR measurements acquired
coherence image, can be derived from two co-registered SAR images from at least three imaging geometries, we can theoretically extend the
(Zebker and Villasenor, 1992), and have been proven useful in charac- displacement vectors to 3-D (Rocca, 2003; Wright et al., 2004b). The es-
terizing hazards such as flooding and forest fire (Lu et al., 2010; timated 3-D displacements (du, de and dn) and their variances (σ 2du ; σ 2de
Tanase et al., 2010; Schepanski et al., 2012). and σ 2dn ) can be determined from the three InSAR LOS measurements
Although D-InSAR has been well developed and is a state-of-the-art (dlos,1, dlos,2 and dlos,3) and their errors (σ 2dlos;1 ; σ 2dlos;2 and σ 2dlos;3 ) as follows:
processing technique for retrieving ground deformation from SAR data,
it is nowadays mainly limited to the areas with very good interferomet- 2 3 2 3
du dlos;1
ric coherence or used as a basis for MT-InSAR analysis. Considering that 4 de 5 ¼ Γ  4 dlos;2 5 ð2Þ
this technique only employs two SAR images, there is a potential to use dn dlos;3
D-InSAR to conduct near-real-time routine monitoring work in the
future, which is quite helpful for urgent hazard warning.
2 2 3 3
2
σ du T
2.1.2. MT-InSAR 6 2 7 6 Γ1  Σ  Γ1T 7
In order to better minimize the decorrelation noise and atmospheric 6σ 7 ¼ 4Γ  Σ  Γ 5 ð3Þ
4 de 5 2 2
2 T
artifacts on one hand and to provide deformation history on a successive σ dn Γ3  Σ  Γ3
time interval on the other, several MT-InSAR approaches have been de-
veloped from the D-InSAR technique in recent years. According to the
observation types and the rules of interferometric pair selection, these with
MT-InSAR approaches can be generally classified into three categories.
The first regards the arcs between two adjacent pixels as observations 2 3
2
3 2 3 2
σ dlos;1 σ dlos;1 dlos;2 σ dlos;1 dlos;3
and selects and exploits interferograms with single master, termed as Γ1 a1 b1 c1 −1 6 7
Γ ¼ 4 Γ 2 5 ¼ 4 a2 c2 5 ; Σ ¼ 6 σ dlos;2 dlos;3 7
2
persistent scatterers (PS) based techniques (e.g., Ferretti et al., 2000, b2 4 σ dlos;1 dlos;2 σ dlos;2 5
2001; Kampes and Hanssen, 2004; Hooper et al., 2007). In this kind of Γ3 a3 b3 c3 2
σ dlos;1 dlos;3 σ dlos;2 dlos;3 σ dlos;3
techniques, only the coherent pixels with stable phase or amplitude in- ai ¼ cos θinc;i ; i ¼ 1; 2; 3
formation are exploited. The deformation estimation and unwrapping  
bi ¼ − sin θinc;i sin α az;i −3π=2 ; i ¼ 1; 2; 3
operation are simultaneously carried out, firstly in the temporal domain  
and then in the spatial. The second is referred to as small baseline (SB) ci ¼ − sin θinc;i cos α az;i −3π=2 ; i ¼ 1; 2; 3
based approaches (e.g., Berardino et al., 2002; Usai, 2003; Lanari et al.,
2004), which deal with multi-master interferograms and investigate
where θinc,i and αaz,i are the radar incidence angle and the orbit azimuth
the distributed pixels directly. The interferograms with short time inter-
angle (positive clockwise from the North) for the ith InSAR LOS mea-
vals and small perpendicular baselines are selected and utilized to sup-
surements, respectively. σ dlos;i dlos; j represents the covariance between
press the effects of spatial–temporal decorrelation. Multi-looking
the ith and the jth InSAR LOS measurements, which can be regarded
operation is also applied to make the unwrapping operation workable
as zero since the LOS measurements acquired from different tracks are
with some sacrifice of spatial resolution of the estimated deformation
generally mutually independent. The imaging geometry of the SAR
field. The last category is constituted of some PS and SB mixed
acquisition is shown in Fig. 2. Note that all the SAR acquisitions are
approaches (e.g., Mora et al., 2003; Hooper, 2008; Zhang et al., 2011a,
b, 2012). Arcs between the selected pixels and multi-master interfero-
grams co-exist in this kind of techniques in order to include the merits
of both the PS and SB methods. To separate the atmospheric artifacts
from the deformation time series, most of MT-InSAR approaches imple-
ment a spatial low-pass filtering followed by a temporal high-pass
filtering, which take account of the different temporal and spatial char-
acteristics between the surface deformations and atmospheric artifacts
(i.e., high temporal correlation and moderate spatial correlation for
the former, while low temporal correlation but high spatial correlation
for the latter). Besides, in recent years, water vapor products provided
by meteorological observations and numerical weather models exhibit
great potential in calibrating InSAR atmospheric effects, and have been
experimentally incorporated into the MT-InSAR processing (e.g., Li
et al., 2009; Jolivet et al., 2011; Zhao et al., 2011).
Currently the MT-InSAR algorithm is still under evolution. More and
more modeling and parameter estimation methods are emerging to en-
hance the robustness of this technique. For instance, Ferretti et al.
(2011) proposed to combine both persistent and distributed scatterers
to enable PS method to provide spatially more detailed measurements
in non-urban areas. A joint model has been recently developed based
on the SB framework to separate the long-wavelength deformation sig-
nals from the orbital errors induced by inaccurate estimation of baseline
(Zhang et al., 2013). However, atmospheric artifact is still a challenging Fig. 2. The imaging geometry of the right-looking SAR acquisition. θinc and αazi represent
noise that degrades the accuracy of deformation time series product, the incidence and azimuth angles, respectively. The superscripts A and D denote ascending
and will remain as a critical issue for a long while. and descending, respectively.
 J. Hu et al. / Earth-Science Reviews 133 (2014) 1–17 5

(a) ASAR Ascending (b) ASAR Descending (c) PALSAR Ascending

42 30'

m m m
0.059 0.059 0.059
42 15'
0.000 0.000 AZ 0.000
AZ
LOS
LOS LOS
−0.059 AZ −0.059 −0.059
42 00'
13 00' 13 15' 13 30' 13 45' 13 00' 13 15' 13 30' 13 45' 13 00' 13 15' 13 30' 13 45'

(d) U-D (e) E-W (f) N-S

42 24'

m m m
1.0 0.10 9
0.05 6
0.5 0.00 3
0.0 −0.05 0
42 12'
−0.10 −3
−0.5
−0.15 −6

13 24 ' 13 36' 13 24 ' 13 36' 13 24 ' 13 36'

(g) U-D (h) E-W (i) ASAR

Des
s
AS AR A
AR As
42 24' PALS 42 30'

m m
0.15
0.00
0.10
−0.05
0.05 42 00'
−0.10
0.00
42 12' −0.15
−0.05
−0.20
−0.10

13 24 ' 13 36' 13 24 ' 13 36' 12 30' 13 00' 13 30'

Fig. 3. (a–c) The rewrapped co-seismic surface displacement fields acquired by ASAR ascending, descending and PALSAR ascending interferograms, respectively. LOS and AZ represent
the LOS and azimuth directions respectively and the same hereinafter. (d–f) The 3-D co-seismic displacement estimations in the U–D, E–W and N–S directions, respectively. (g, h) The
3-D co-seismic displacement estimations in the U–D and E–W directions, assuming the N–S displacement being zero. (i) Location map of the L'Aquila earthquake. The boxes represent
the frames of the used SAR data. The star indicates the location of the epicenter.
Reproduced from Wang et al. (2012) with modifications.

assumed to be imaged by right-looking sensor, which is the most three LOS measurements, as calculated according to Eq. (3) without
common case. considering the correlation between the LOS measurements
A study on the Italy L'Aquila earthquake occurred in April 6, 2009 8 2 2 2 2
was carried out to check the accuracies of the 3-D derivates from >
> σ ¼ 91:84  σ dlos;1 þ 5:73  σ dlos;2 þ 52:05  σ dlos;3
< du
InSAR LOS measurements (Wang et al., 2012). This seismic event was 2 2 2 2
σ de ¼ 1:86  σ dlos;1 þ 1:83  σ dlos;2 þ 0:0001  σ dlos;3
observed by three interferometric pairs acquired from ENVISAT ASAR >
>
: σ 2 ¼ 5834:93  σ 2 þ 615:46  σ 2 þ 3715:47  σ 2 :
ascending, descending and ALOS PALSAR ascending orbits, respectively dn dlos;1 dlos;2 dlos;3

(see Fig. 3i). Note that all the three interferograms are right-looking.
Fig. 3a–c shows the co-seismic surface displacement fields along the
corresponding three LOS directions, respectively, which have been
rewrapped for better visualization. We estimate the 3-D co-seismic
surface displacement fields induced by the L'Aquila earthquake by
using Eq. (2), as shown in Fig. 3d–f. The variances of the 3-D co-
seismic displacements are expressed in terms of the errors of the
It is obvious that the N–S displacement component is extraordinarily
more sensitive to the errors of the InSAR LOS measurements than that of
the other two. This is expected as the SAR satellites are operated in the
near-polar orbits and all the three interferograms are right-looking.
When both left-looking and right-looking interferograms are available,
the errors of the N–S displacement component would decrease
6 J. Hu et al. / Earth-Science Reviews 133 (2014) 1–17
significantly (Wright et al., 2004b). The U–D displacement component
has better resistance to the errors of the descending LOS measurement,
but medium resistance to that of the ascending LOS measurements. This
can be ascribed to the ill-condition caused by the exploitation of two as-
cending LOS measurements with quite similar imaging geometries. The
best determination occurs for the E–W component, which is benefited
from the opposite imaging geometries between the ascending and
descending acquisitions.
The co-seismic displacements are also measured by 17 GPS stations.
We use them to validate the accuracies of the InSAR derived 3-D dis-
placements. The root-mean-square errors (RMSEs) between the InSAR
and GPS results are 12.8, 3.2 and 96.4 cm for the U–D, E–W and N–S di-
rections, respectively, which demonstrate the above theoretical analysis
of the accuracy of the 3-D displacements. This case study shows the lim-
itation of mapping 3-D displacement by only exploiting the InSAR LOS
measurements, especially in the component that is nearly in line with
the azimuth while the sensors have the same side looking.
3. Derivation of two-dimensional displacement maps from a single
interferometric pair
3.1. Offset-Tracking technique
In order to overcome the limitation of 1-D InSAR LOS measurements
and yield reliable solution especially in the N–S direction, Michel et al.
(1999a,b) proposed the use of the co-registered offset between a pair
of ERS-1 SAR images to assess the 2-D co-seismic displacement fields in-
duced by the Landers earthquake. Note that the 2-D fields consist of the
range as well as the azimuth components, where the former is also
along the LOS direction and the latter is perpendicular to the LOS direc-
tion. The range and azimuth offsets are generally derived by applying a
cross-correlation technique on the amplitude images (Rott et al., 1998;
Gray et al., 2001), or by applying fringe visibility based algorithm to the
complex SAR images (Derauw, 1999). The surface displacements that
occurred during the SAR acquisitions are then retrieved from the offsets
by removing the components of orbit separation and stereo topography
(Werner et al., 2005). When L-band SAR data, e.g., JERS-1 and ALOS
PALSAR scenes, are involved, the effects of ionospheric electron
concentration would also contribute to the results of Offset-Tracking
m m
24 30' 1.5 1.5
0.0 0.0
−1.5 −1.5
24 00'
LOS
23 30' (a) AZ
(b)
120 30' 121 00'
Fig. 4. The 2-D co-seismic displacement fields of the Chi-Chi earthquake. (a, b) The azimuth and range displacements derived from Offset-Tracking. (c) The LOS displacement derived from
D-InSAR. All the displacement fields have been rewrapped for better visualization. The line indicates the rough location of the Chelungpu fault.
Reproduced from Hu et al. (2008) with modifications.
(Gray et al., 2000), and need to be mitigated (Wegmüller et al., 2006;
Raucoules and de Michele, 2010). For most of the cases, the accuracy of
Offset-Tracking derived displacements is between 1/10 and 1/30 pixel
size (Simons and Rosen, 2007). Taking the ERS-1/2 data for instance,
the accuracies of the azimuth and range displacements can reach
approximately 13 and 26 cm, respectively.
Although the accuracies are much worse than that of the InSAR LOS
measurements, the Offset-Tracking measurements have the advantages
of an additional measurement in the azimuth direction (nearly parallel
to the N–S), better resistance to the phase decorrelation and no need for
phase unwrapping, which are all essential for the investigation of earth-
quake, volcanic eruption and glacier movements. For example, Sarti
et al. (2006) presented the near-field co-seismic displacement fields of
the December 26, 2003 Bam earthquake by applying the Offset-
Tracking method. The results showed that the 2-D displacement fields
were more helpful in constraining geophysical model than the 1-D
LOS displacement field. Liu et al. (2007) investigated the integration of
the Offset-Tracking result in the azimuth direction and the D-InSAR
result in the range direction for estimating 2-D glacier motions in
Antarctica. However, it is worth noting that Offset-Tracking derived de-
formation map is usually obtained from evenly distributed grid nodes
over a study area, with which only coarse spatial resolution's deforma-
tion can be expected. More attempts should be focused on integrating
external information (e.g., optical images) to guide grid optimization.
In such a way both the resolution and efficiency of Offset-Tracking can
be improved.
Fig. 4a and b exhibits the 2-D co-seismic surface displacement
fields of the 1999 Chi-Chi, Taiwan earthquake derived from a descend-
ing ERS-2 SAR image pair by using the Offset-Tracking method
(Hu et al., 2008). Note that the orbital ramp has been corrected by
employing 10 GPS stations as ground control points (GCPs). It is obvious
that the Chelungpu fault is distinguished in both the azimuth and
the range displacement maps. RMSEs between the displacements by
Offset-Tracking and by 15 independent GPS stations are 6.9 and
5.7 cm respectively for the azimuth and range directions. The 1-D LOS
displacement measured by D-InSAR is shown in Fig. 4c for comparison.
Although the accuracies of D-InSAR are in general better than that of the
Offset-Tracking, only a very small fraction of the displacements along
the range direction can be detected in the foot wall by the D-InSAR
m
0.014
0.000
−0.014
LOS LOS
AZ
(c) AZ
120 30' 121 00' 120 30' 121 00'
 J. Hu et al. / Earth-Science Reviews 133 (2014) 1–17 7

cm cm
34 00'
(a) 1.0 (b) 50 (c) 50

0.8 25 25
0.6
0 0
0.4
−25 −25
0.2

0.0 −50 −50

33 30'

33 00'

AZ AZ AZ
32 30'

LOS LOS LOS

96 30' 97 00' 96 30' 97 00' 96 30' 97 00'

Fig. 5. The 2-D co-seismic displacement fields of the Yushu earthquake. (a) The coherence map. (b) The LOS displacement derived from D-InSAR. (c) The azimuth displacement derived
from MAI. The line indicates the location of the surface rupture derived from the LOS displacement field.
Reproduced from Hu et al. (2012a) with modifications.

method. Therefore, it is declared that the Offset-Tracking method pro-
vides more useful knowledge on the co-seismic ground deformation
due to the Chi-Chi earthquake than the D-InSAR method does.
3.2. Multi-aperture InSAR technique
Multi-aperture InSAR (MAI), firstly proposed by Bechor and Zebker
(2006), is an alternative approach of inferring azimuth displacement
from an interferometric pair. The crucial step of this technique is azi-
muth common band filtering, which divides the full-aperture SLC SAR
images into two sub-aperture ones (Barbot et al., 2008; Wegmüller
et al., 2009). For each interferometric pair, four sub-aperture SLCs can
be generated and used to produce the forward- and backward-looking
interferograms. The azimuth displacement between the two SAR acqui-
sitions can thus be retrieved from the differential interferogram, which
is produced by the conjugate multiplication of the forward- and
backward-looking interferograms. Jung et al. (2009) improved the
MAI technique by correcting the disturbance caused by the minor
difference between the perpendicular baselines of the forward- and
backward-looking interferograms with a second-order polynomial
model. Recently, Hu et al. (2012a) detected the effects of ionospheric
electron concentration in the MAI measurements with L-band PALSAR
data, and proposed to minimize the effects by applying a directional
filtering and interpolation procedure.
Since the MAI measurements are also derived from interferometric
phases as the D-InSAR does, the accuracy of MAI depends on the inter-
ferometric coherence and the number of looks, and is in general higher
than that of the Offset-Tracking (Bechor and Zebker, 2006; Jung et al.,
2009). The MAI technique is computationally more effective than the
Offset-Tracking. However, the MAI measurements are also very sensi-
tive to the phase decorrelation, and therefore are inferior to the
Offset-Tracking method in the case of detecting tremendous ground
movements, e.g., great co-seismic displacement in the near field and
fairly fast glacier movements. An elaborately designed filter (to elimi-
nate the ionospheric and orbital errors) will help to improve the quality
of the MAI derived deformation map. In addition, fusion technique
should be developed to fully exploit the MAI and Offset-Tracking
measurements.
It should be stressed that the co-registration error between the
forward- and backward-looking interferograms can also be exploited
to estimate the surface displacement in both azimuth and range direc-
tions. This method is however termed as spectral diversity technique
(Scheiber and Moreira, 2000). Erten et al. (2010) demonstrated that
decimeter accuracy can be achieved with spectral diversity technique
in the investigation of the co-seismic deformation of the 2003 Bam,
Iran earthquake with C-band ENVISAT ASAR data.
Fig. 5 shows an example of integrating the measurements from
D-InSAR and MAI to produce the 2-D co-seismic displacement field of
the Mw 7.1 Yushu earthquake, which occurred on April 14, 2010 (Hu
et al., 2012a). The used PALSAR images are acquired on January 15
and April 17, 2010, respectively. The perpendicular baseline is about
700 m. Although in the area with low coherence (Fig. 5a), the MAI mea-
surements (Fig. 5c) are more sensitive to the noises than the D-InSAR
ones do (Fig. 5b), the MAI technique works well in the near field of
the earthquake. The 2-D displacement fields reveal that the Yushu
earthquake was motivated by a left slip fault, which would not be
detected in the 1-D LOS measurements.
4. Generation of three-dimensional displacement maps based on
InSAR measurements
4.1. Combination of multi-pass LOS and azimuth measurements
It is clear that the LOS measurements can be obtained from the
D-InSAR or the Offset-Tracking techniques, and the azimuth measure-
ments can be obtained through the Offset-Tracking or the MAI tech-
niques. By combining the LOS and the azimuth measurements from at
least two different tracks, complete 3-D displacement maps can be recon-
structed with a weighted least squares (WLS) adjustment (Fialko et al.,
2001; Wright et al., 2004b; Hu et al., 2010, 2012b)
 −1
T T −1 T −1
½ du de dn  ¼ B Σ B B Σ L ð4Þ
8 J. Hu et al. / Earth-Science Reviews 133 (2014) 1–17
with
2 3 2 3
a1 b1 c1 dlos;1
6 ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ 7 6 ⋮ 7
6 7 6 7
6 am cm 7 6 7
B¼6
bm 7; L ¼ 6 dlos;m 7
6 0 u1 7
v1 7 6 d 7
6 6 az;1 7
4 ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ 5 4 ⋮ 5
0 un vn d az;n
2 2 2 2 2 2
Σ ¼ diag σ dlos;1 ; σ dlos;2 ; ⋯; σ dlos;m ; σ daz;1 ; σ daz;2 ; ⋯; σ daz;n
 
ui ¼ − cos α az;i −3π=2 ; i ¼ 1; ⋯; n
 
vi ¼ − sin α az;i −3π=2 ; i ¼ 1; ⋯; n
where m and n are the number of the LOS and azimuth measurements,
respectively. It should however be mentioned that the interferometric
pairs in both ascending and descending orbits are required to improve
the independence of the InSAR observations.
4.1.1. Fusion of D-InSAR and Offset-Tracking measurements
Fialko et al. (2001) derived the complete 3-D co-seismic surface
deformation fields caused by the 1999 Mw 7.1 Hector Mine earthquake
by combining the D-InSAR LOS measurements from both ascending and
descending orbits and the Offset-Tracking derived azimuth measure-
ments from the descending orbit. The RMSEs between the InSAR e-
stimations and GPS observations are 4.9, 5.9 and 20.5 cm for the U–D,
E–W and N–S components, respectively. The accuracy in the N–S com-
ponent is relatively lower because the less accurate Offset-Tracking
measurements contribute dominantly in this direction. Subsequently,
Fialko et al. (2005), Funning et al. (2005), Gonzalez et al. (2009) and
Hu et al. (2010) respectively calculated the 3-D co-seismic displacement
fields of the 2003 Mw 6.5 Bam, Iran earthquake by integrating
ascending and descending LOS measurements from D-InSAR and
azimuth measurements from the Offset-Tracking. Gray et al. (2005)
used D-InSAR and the Offset-Tracking measurements to solve the 3-D
surface ice motions in the interior of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
Fig. 6 shows the 3-D displacement fields of the 2013 Mw 6.5 Bam,
Iran earthquake estimated by Hu et al. (2010). Four ENVISAT ASAR im-
ages acquired from ascending and descending orbits are processed with
the methods of D-InSAR and Offset-Tracking to generate two LOS and
two azimuth displacement fields, respectively (Fig. 6a–d). The 3-D
displacement fields (Fig. 6e–g) are then determined from these four
displacement fields by applying the WLS adjustment. It is clear that
the N–S component (Fig. 6g) is subject to more noise contamination
than the U–D (Fig. 6e) and E–W ones do (Fig. 6f). This is expected
since the N–S displacements are dominantly retrieved from the Offset-
Tracking measurements.
4.1.2. Fusion of D-InSAR and MAI measurements
Jung et al. (2011) mapped the 3-D surface deformations induced by
the 2007 eruption of Kilauea volcano by combining the ascending and
descending measurements from MAI and D-InSAR. Comparing with
the GPS observations at 24 stations, the RMSEs of the 3-D deformations
are only 2.14, 1.58 and 3.62 cm for the U–D, E–W and N–S components,
respectively. The improvement is primarily due to the more accurate
MAI measurements in the azimuth direction. Gourmelen et al. (2011)
employed the MAI and D-InSAR measurements in descending and
ascending orbits to determine the 3-D glacier movements of the
Langjokull and Hofsjokull ice caps in Iceland. Hu et al. (2012b) inferred
the full 3-D co-seismic displacement fields of the 2010 Mw 6.3 Darfield
earthquake from two LOS and two azimuth measurements, generated
from ascending and descending PALSAR interferometric pairs using
the methods of D-InSAR and MAI, respectively.
Fig. 7 reveals the case of detecting the co-seismic surface displace-
ment of the Darfield, New Zealand earthquake occurred in September
3, 2010 (Hu et al., 2012b). In that study, D-InSAR and MAI measure-
ments (Fig. 7a–d) from both ascending and descending L-band ALOS
PALSAR data are employed. Comparing with the Offset-Tracking mea-
surements, the standard deviations of the MAI measurements decrease
from 32.6 and 34.5 cm for the ascending and descending orbits to 5.0
and 16.1 cm, indicating an average improvement of about 69%. The
estimated 3-D co-seismic displacements of the Darfield earthquake
are shown in Fig. 7e–g. Although no results can be achieved near the
rupture due to the loss of interferometric coherence, great vertical and
 horizontal ground displacements are both detected in the near field of
the seismic event, which have also been validated by GPS observations.
4.1.3. Utilization of Offset-Tracking measurements only
Wang et al. (2007) determined a full 3-D co-seismic surface dis-
placement fields of the 2005 Mw 7.6 Kashmir earthquake by using the
Offset-Tracking measurements derived from one ascending and one de-
scending ENVISAT ASAR interferometric pairs. de Michele et al. (2010)
combined the Offset-Tracking measurements from ascending PALSAR
and descending ASAR images to estimate the 3-D surface displacements
in the near field of the 2008 Mw 8.0 Wenchuan earthquake. Although
with better resistance to the interferometric decorrelation, the Offset-
Tracking derived 3-D displacements are in general lower in accuracy,
depending on the spatial resolution of the SAR data (Werner et al.,
2005). Fallourd et al. (2010) applied the Offset-Tracking method to
the high-resolution TerraSAR-X images acquired from ascending and
descending orbits for mapping 3-D movements of alpine glacier on
Mont-Blanc, France. Good agreements have been found between the
Offset-Tracking estimations and the GPS ground truths.
4.2. Integration of InSAR and GPS data
GPS is the most commonly used technique for 3-D surface displace-
ment measurements. For the continuously operated mode, the accuracy
of GPS measurement can reach the level of sub-centimeter, especially in
the horizontal direction. However, the GPS measurements are not read-
ily and widely available with dense geographical distribution due to the
limitation of deployment restriction and operational cost. Even in the
case of the very dense GPS network (e.g., SCIGN and GEONET), the
spatial resolution is no better than 10 km (Hudnut et al., 2001; Sagiya,
2004). Nevertheless, merging InSAR and GPS is still extremely desirable
due to their complementary nature (Bos et al., 2004; Zhang et al., 2008;
Wei et al., 2010; Tong et al., 2013).
Gudmundsson et al. (2002) first proposed to integrate InSAR and
GPS data for estimating spatially continuous 3-D displacement velocity
fields of the Reykjanes Peninsula, SW Iceland. In their study, the sparse
GPS observations are interpolated into the same spatial lattice of the
InSAR measurements, and the Markov random field-based regulariza-
tion and simulated annealing algorithm are used to find the optimal so-
lution of the full 3-D displacement fields, which have been separated
into two 2-D problems. This method is however time consuming since
the global optimization technique (i.e., simulated annealing) is some-
what computationally intensive with a slow convergence rate. A modi-
fied method, named analytical optimization, was then presented based
on the Gibbs–Markov random fields equivalency within a Bayesian sta-
tistical framework, which is efficient in execution and has been success-
fully applied to retrieve the 3-D velocity maps of Southern California
(Samsonov and Tiampo, 2006; Samsonov et al., 2007). Guglielmino
et al. (2011a,b) proposed a Simultaneous and Integrated Strain Tensor
Estimation (SISTEM) technique to estimate 3-D displacements as well
as 3-D strain and the rigid body rotation tensors from the integration
of InSAR and GPS. Based on the elastic theory and WLS framework,
the method does not require the interpolation of the sparse GPS obser-
vation. In the same year, Catalao et al. (2011) suggested the fusion of the
results of PS-InSAR and GPS to estimate the 3-D displacement velocities
of Azores islands. By mitigating atmospheric effects based on the
Weather Research Forecasting (WRF) model and assuming smooth hor-
izontal ground motions, accurate vertical displacement can be retrieved
at the coherent points in the Azores islands. Recently, Hu et al. (2012c)
 m m m m
0.014 0.014
0.4 0.4

0.2 0.2
29 12'
0.000 0.000 0.0 0.0

−0.2 −0.2

−0.4 −0.4
−0.014 −0.014
29 00'

J. Hu et al. / Earth-Science Reviews 133 (2014) 1–17

AZ AZ

LOS LOS LOS LOS

28 48'
(a) Ascending LOS (b) Descending LOS AZ (c) Ascending AZ (d) Descending AZ AZ
58 12' 58 24' 58 36' 58 12' 58 24' 58 36' 58 12' 58 24' 58 36' 58 12' 58 24' 58 36'

m m m
0.3
0.2 0.4 Desce
0.2 nding
0.1 0.1 0.2
29 12'
ding 29 30'
0.0 0.0 0.0
Ascen
−0.1 −0.1 −0.2
−0.2
−0.2 −0.4
−0.3
29 00'
29 00'

28 30'
28 48'
(e) U-D (f) E-W (g) N-S (h)
58 12' 58 24' 58 36' 58 12' 58 24' 58 36' 58 12' 58 24' 58 36' 58 00' 58 30' 59 00' 59 30'

Fig. 6. (a–d) The co-seismic surface displacement fields of the Bam earthquake along ascending LOS, descending LOS, ascending azimuth and descending azimuth directions, respectively. (e–g) The 3-D co-seismic displacement estimations in the U–D,
E–W and N–S directions, respectively. (h) Location map of the Bam earthquake. The boxes represent the frames of the used SAR data. The star indicates the location of the epicenter.
Reproduced from Hu et al. (2010) with modifications.

9
 10
m m m m
0.059 0.059 1.4 1.4

0.7 0.7
−43 00' 0.000 0.000 0.0
0.0

−0.7 −0.7

−0.059 −0.059 −1.4 −1.4

−43 30'

AZ AZ

J. Hu et al. / Earth-Science Reviews 133 (2014) 1–17

LOS LOS LOS LOS
−44 00'

(a) Ascending LOS (b) Descending LOS AZ

(c) Ascending AZ (d) Descending AZ AZ
171 30' 172 00' 172 30' 171 30' 172 00' 172 30' 171 30' 172 00' 172 30' 171 30' 172 00' 172 30'
m m m
nding
1
2
1.0
Asce
0.5 Desc
1
0 endi
−43 00' 0.0 ng
0
−1 −0.5 −43
−1
−2 −1.0

Darfield Darfield Darfield

−43 30'
Christchurch Christchurch Christchurch

−44

−44 00'

(e) U-D (f) E-W (g) N-S (h)

171 30' 172 00' 172 30' 171 30' 172 00' 172 30' 171 30' 172 00' 172 30' 171 172 173

Fig. 7. (a–d) The co-seismic surface displacement fields of the Darfield earthquake along ascending LOS, descending LOS, ascending azimuth and descending azimuth directions, respectively. (e–g) The 3-D co-seismic displacement estimations in the
U–D, E–W and N–S directions, respectively. (h) Location map of the Darfield earthquake. The boxes represent the frames of the used SAR data. The star indicates the location of the epicenter.
Reproduced from Hu et al. (2012b) with modifications.
 J. Hu et al. / Earth-Science Reviews 133 (2014) 1–17
introduced the variance component estimation algorithm to the InSAR
and GPS fused model in order to avoid the crucial but difficult work of
determining accurate a priori variances of InSAR and GPS observations.
In Fig. 8, we show the inferred 3-D displacement velocity fields of
Southern California from InSAR and GPS data acquired from 2003 to
2007 (Hu et al., 2012c). 18 ascending and 16 descending orbits'
ENVISAT ASAR images are processed respectively with the SBAS
approach to produce the displacement maps along their respective
LOS directions. The relative displacement fields at the interval of nearly
one year multiple were selected to minimize the effect of seasonal oscil-
lation in the velocity estimation. The synchronous measurements on 54
GPS sites (marked as triangles in Fig. 8) from the Southern California In-
tegrated GPS Network (SCIGN) were interpolated to provide the 3-D
surface displacement vectors covering the same temporal interval and
spatial lattice as InSAR measurements. Fig. 8a–c shows the combined
3-D displacement velocity results from the InSAR and GPS observations.
It is observed that the U–D velocity map (Fig. 8a) accompanies with sev-
eral local signals, including a 2–3 cm/yr subsidence induced by the
groundwater withdrawal in Pomona and a 1 cm/yr uplift due to the in-
flation effects of oil extraction in Santa Fe Springs. While strong velocity
gradients appear in the horizontal components (Fig. 8b and c), indicat-
ing that the ground of Southern California was suffering from great
shorting along the north-western direction. The RMSEs between
the 3-D velocity estimations and the GPS measurements at 15 checking
sites (marked as boxes in Fig. 8) are 1.9, 1.8 and 0.6 mm/yr for the U–D,
E–W and N–S components, respectively.
4.3. Prior information assisted approaches
Except for the GPS involved method, at least three independent
InSAR observations with obviously different geometries are required to
infer full 3-D surface displacement fields. These are often difficult to be
satisfied. However, in some particular applications, e.g., glacier move-
ment and landslide monitoring, the prior information on ground move-
ment can be exploited to relax the restriction on InSAR observations.
4.3.1. Surface-parallel flow assumption
Joughin et al. (1998) developed a method to estimate the 3-D veloc-
ity fields of Ryder Glacier in Greenland by using the assumption that the
glacier moves parallel to its ground surface and the D-InSAR LOS mea-
surements from ERS-1/2 ascending and descending tandem pairs. In
this regime, the U–D displacement component can be related to the
horizontal ones by
du ¼ ð∂h=∂xÞ  de þ ð∂h=∂yÞ  dn ð5Þ
where ∂h/∂x and ∂h/∂y are the surface slopes along the E–W and N–S di-
rections, respectively, which can be estimated from the DEM data
(Mukherjee et al., 2013). Although accurate estimation of the surface
slope is required, the technique is acceptable for the estimation of the
3-D surface displacements when only two independent InSAR measure-
ments are available. In the same year, Mohr et al. (1998) demonstrated
the feasibility and assessed the accuracy of the method in estimating the
3-D movements of the StorstrØmmen glacier, Greenland, by comparing
them with the in situ GPS data. Kumar et al. (2011) investigated the 3-D
glacier velocities in the Himalayas from merging ERS-1/2 derived as-
cending and descending LOS displacements under the surface-parallel
flow assumption. In the study of the LangjÖkull and HofsjÖkull ice
caps, Gourmelen et al. (2011) demonstrated that the solution from the
surface-parallel flow assumption agreed well with that from the combi-
nation of D-InSAR and MAI results in ascending and descending orbits.
Li et al. (2013) employed this method to estimate the 3-D movements
of the Southern Inylchek glacier from the ascending ALOS PALSAR ac-
quisition derived Offset-Tracking measurements.
However, caution should be exercised that surface-parallel flow as-
sumption may be problematic for the glacier with vertical movements,
11
e.g., ablation and freeze. Reeh et al. (1999) found that the local mass bal-
ance was damaged by this assumption when the glacier is in non-steady
state. Subsequently, they used the mass conservation principle to re-
place the surface-parallel flow assumption in the estimation of the 3-D
glacier movements of StorstrØmmen by using the ascending and de-
scending LOS measurements as well as the ice thickness measurement
from airborne ice-sounding radar (Reeh et al., 2003).
4.3.2. Neglect of the N–S displacement component
As aforementioned, the current SAR satellites fly in the near-polar
orbit. Thus, in the non-polar regions, the N–S surface displacements
have little contributions to the D-InSAR derived LOS measurements. If
the orientations of the investigated ground movements greatly deviate
from the N–S direction, such as the ground subsidence/uplift associated
with subsurface fluid and the fault creeps along a roughly E–W trending
fault, it is recommended to neglect the N–S component in the estima-
tion. For example, in the investigation of the 3-D co-seismic displace-
ments of the Mw 6.7 Nenana Mountain, Alaska Earthquake occurred
in October 23, 2002, Wright et al. (2004b) used 5 Radarsar-1 interfero-
grams from 4 different geometries, including ascending and descending
orbits. However, the standard errors reach 41, 6 and 286 mm for the U–
D, E–W and N–S components, respectively. Since the earthquake is ori-
ented approximately in the E–W direction, the N–S displacement is ex-
pected to be insignificant. Under the assumption that the N–S
component is zero, a re-estimation was conducted and the standard
error of U–D components has been greatly reduced to 4 mm. In
Manzo et al. (2006), a simplified geometry is assumed for the ascending
and descending SAR acquisitions, where the N–S displacement compo-
nent is not considered in the D-InSAR LOS measurements. The U–D and
E–W displacement components can thus be well resolved from the
ascending and descending LOS measurements, especially by assuming
the same incidence angles for the ascending and descending orbits.
Recently, Gernhardt and Bamler (2012) employed ascending and de-
scending TerraSAR-X data to investigate the deformation of single
buildings in Berlin. By neglecting the N–S displacement component,
the decomposition of the seasonal and linear displacements in the
E–W and U–D directions has been conducted successfully.
According to the GPS observations during the 2009 L'Aquila earth-
quake, only several centimeters of displacements have occurred in the
N–S direction (Anzidei et al., 2009; Cheloni et al., 2010). Therefore, it
is safe to assume that the N–S displacements do not contribute to the
LOS measurements. Fig. 3g and h shows the solutions of the U–D and
E–W co-seismic displacements after neglecting the N–S displacements
(Wang et al., 2012). The RMSEs between the InSAR and GPS results
are 1.5 and 2.7 cm for the U–D and E–W components, indicating relative
improvements of 88% and 16% when comparing to the solutions includ-
ing the N–S displacements.
5. Discussions and recommendations
5.1. Current challenges
In this paper, a couple of methods for estimating 3-D displacements
based on InSAR measurements have been reviewed. Obviously, the ca-
pability of 3-D displacement monitoring has been widely explored in
the InSAR field during the past decades. However, there is no single gen-
eral approach that is applicable to very diverse deformation mapping
cases. Table 2 outlines the strengths and weaknesses of each method
discussed in this article. The diversity of the methods drives us to inves-
tigate the selection of the most appropriate approach for an interesting
event.
5.1.1. Mapping significant ground movement
3-D deformation fields allow for better understanding of the dynam-
ics of the area characterized by large or rapid ground movement, such as
those caused by earthquake, volcanic activity and glacier motion. The
 12
34 30'
(a) U-D (b) E-W (c) N-S

J. Hu et al. / Earth-Science Reviews 133 (2014) 1–17

34 00'
P

SFS

cm/yr cm/yr cm/yr

33 30'
−3 −2 −1 0 1 −5 −4 −3 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5
−118 00' −117 30' −118 00' −117 30' −118 00' −117 30'

Fig. 8. The 3-D displacement velocity fields of South California. The triangles and squares indicate the locations of the GPS sites used for 3-D velocity estimation and for validation, respectively. P: Pomona. SFS: Santa Fe Springs. (a) The U–D solution. (b)
The E–W solution. (c) The N–S solution.
Reproduced from Hu et al. (2012c) with modifications.
 J. Hu et al. / Earth-Science Reviews 133 (2014) 1–17 13

Table 2
Summary of the commonly used InSAR methods for 3-D displacements estimation.

Methods Main advantages Main disadvantages Acceptable types Illustrative examples

of displacement

Multi-pass D-InSAR
Multi-pass D-InSAR + Offset-Tracking
Multi-pass D-InSAR + MAI
Multi-pass Offset-Tracking
D-InSAR + GPS
Surface-parallel flow assumption
Neglect of the N–S displacement
• High accuracy for all the three • Limited in high latitude region • All Gray (2011)
components
• High accuracy for the U–D and E–W • Low accuracy for N–S component • Earthquake Fialko et al. (2001, 2005)
components • Time consuming • Volcanic activity Funning et al. (2005)
• Ascending and descending geometries • Glacier motion Gray et al. (2005)
are sufficient Gonzalez et al. (2009)
Hu et al. (2010)
• High accuracy for the U–D and E–W • Moderate accuracy for N–S components • Earthquake Jung et al. (2011)
components • Vulnerable to the decorrelation • Volcanic activity Gourmelen et al. (2011)
• Ascending and descending geometries • Glacier motion Hu et al. (2012b)
are sufficient
• Good resistance to the decorrelation • Low accuracy for all the three • Earthquake Wang et al. (2007)
• Ascending and descending geometries components • Volcanic activity de Michele et al. (2010)
are sufficient • Time consuming • Glacier motion Fallourd et al. (2010)
• High accuracy for all the three • Strong dependence on the number and • All Gudmundsson et al. (2002)
components distribution of GPS observations Samsonov et al. (2007)
• Single geometry is sufficient Guglielmino et al. (2011a,b)
Catalao et al. (2011)
Hu et al. (2012c)
• Ascending and/or descending • Requiring for high accuracy DEM • Glacier motion Joughin et al. (1998)
geometries are sufficient • Invalid when evident U–D motion • Landslide Mohr et al. (1998)
• High accuracy for the horizontal occurs Kumar et al. (2011)
components Gourmelen et al. (2011)
Li et al. (2013)
• Ascending and descending geometries • Invalid when significant N–S motion • All Wright et al. (2004b)
are sufficient occurs Manzo et al. (2006)
• Simple in implementation Wang et al. (2012)
Gernhardt and Bamler (2012)

magnitude of these deformations in general ranges from decimeter to
meter, for which the application of the Offset-Tracking or MAI involved
methods may be most suitable. Since the MAI measurement is also re-
trieved from the interferometric phase like the D-InSAR, several studies
have proven that the MAI can better serve to assist D-InSAR in the 3-D
displacement estimations than the Offset-Tracking (e.g., Bechor and
Zebker, 2006; Gourmelen et al., 2011; Hu et al., 2012b). For the forth-
coming Sentinel-1 satellite designed by the European Space Agency
(ESA), Jung et al. (2013b) reported that the disadvantages of the
Offset-Tracking measurements would be more obvious with respect to
the MAI measurements, as a result of the unprecedentedly low azimuth
resolution (i.e., 20 m). However, the use of MAI remains limited to the
high coherence regions. For the ground deformation with high gradi-
ents that damage the coherence of the interferometric pair, e.g., the
surface destruction in the near field of major geophysical events and
the very active glacier shift during the summer, the Offset-Tracking
measurements would be preferable. For instance, the Offset-Tracking
measurements have detected a blind thrust striking in the near field of
the 2008 Mw 8.0 Wenchuan earthquake, which is completely blind to
the MAI and even D-InSAR measurements (de Michele et al., 2010).
Since the accuracies of D-InSAR, Offset-Tracking and MAI measure-
ments are quite different from each other, they need to be appropriately
weighed in the WLS solution of the 3-D displacements. To this, the var-
iances of the D-InSAR, Offset-Tracking and MAI measurements must be
accurately determined first. However, there is no well-developed ap-
proach for determining accurate variances of InSAR measurements
without explicit or implied assumption. Substitutively, the variances of
the measurements are generally estimated using the interferometric co-
herences or a moving window (Hoffmann and Zebker, 2003; Jung et al.,
2011). Although they are simple in realization, more complicated
methods should be developed to improve the weighting scheme of
the WLS adjustment and thus the accuracy of the 3-D displacement
estimations.
5.1.2. Mapping slow surface deformation
It is also of great importance to investigate the 3-D surface displace-
ments due to interseismic activity, underground mining, groundwater
extraction, landslide, land reclamation, etc., which are usually with a
slow rate (e.g., several centimeters per year) and last for a long period
(e.g., several years to several decades). On the basis of the current SAR
data, the Offset-Tracking or MAI involved methods are not expected to
provide reliable measurements for these slow surface deformations.
For an area with enough evenly distributed GPS observations, the
InSAR and GPS integrating methods are the primary technique to esti-
mate 3-D displacements. It has been proven that the RMSEs of the 3-D
displacement measurements decrease as the number of the GPS sites in-
creases (Guglielmino et al., 2011b). The irregular distribution of the GPS
sites can also induce unstable solution with the InSAR and GPS fused
models (Hu et al., 2013a). In the investigation of the 2011 Mw 9.0
Tohoku-Oki earthquake, the results reveal that about 70 km spatial res-
olution of the GPS observations is sufficient to guarantee a high accuracy
and high spatial resolution of 3-D co-seismic displacement fields (Hu
et al., 2013b). This however depends on the degree of the variability of
the ground movements, and perhaps not positively for the areas suffer-
ing from local and complex ground deformations.
The recently launched SAR satellites such as COSMO-SkyMed and
RADARSAT-2 support right- as well as left-looking imaging modes.
Although the left-looking SAR data are seldom acquired, it is worth to
attempt the use of the multi-pass D-InSAR method to estimate 3-D dis-
placements when the left-looking SAR acquisitions are provided togeth-
er with the right-looking ones (Rocca, 2003; Wright et al., 2004b; Hu
et al., 2013c). In the usual case where only the right-looking SAR data
are available, the neglect of the N–S displacement is preferred for
those slowly moving ground deformations induced by such factors as
interseismic activity, underground mining, ground water extraction,
and land reclamation. However, it should be highlighted that this strat-
egy might induce very large uncertainties in the investigation of the
strike-slip faults in nearly the N–S direction and the dip-slip faults in
nearly the E–W direction.
The surface-parallel flow assumption is recommended for the land-
slide monitoring, where the requirement for both ascending and de-
scending LOS measurements cannot always be satisfied in mountainous
regions, because geometric distortions such as shadow, foreshortening
and layover, always make the common viewable areas of ascending and
14 J. Hu et al. / Earth-Science Reviews 133 (2014) 1–17
descending radar very limited. In this case, 3-D displacements can still be
estimated from single-pass LOS measurements by introducing the flow
direction, which can be inferred from the maximum downhill slope or
the shear margins and flow stripes viewed in amplitude image (Joughin
et al., 1998). However, we might obtain inaccurate estimations if the
LOS measurement were less sensitive to the flow vector.
5.1.3. Correcting tropospheric and ionospheric artifacts
The accuracies of InSAR 3-D displacement estimations depend on
the precisions of the InSAR LOS and/or azimuth measurements, which
however are always limited by the atmospheric artifacts. It is well
known that the atmospheric artifacts constitute phase delay or advance
caused by the troposphere or ionosphere, respectively. Troposphere
artifacts can be further decomposed into turbulent and stratified com-
ponents, both of which hamper the accurate retrieval of LOS displace-
ment from D-InSAR and/or MT-InSAR measurements and should be
tackled (Hanssen, 2001; Ding et al., 2008). Explicitly, the stratified tro-
pospheric artifacts are induced by the stratification of the atmosphere
into different vertical refractivity layers and have high correlation with
topographic height (Remy et al., 2003; Biggs et al., 2007). Simple linear
or quadratic regression is usually performed to model and correct these
topography-correlated tropospheric artifacts. Although more compli-
cated methods have been developed based on multi-scale or multi-
resolution analysis (e.g., Lin et al., 2010; Shirzaei and Burgmann,
2012), they cannot compensate the turbulent tropospheric artifacts
that are mainly caused by the high variability of water vapor contained
in the near-ground troposphere, where a strong turbulent mixing pro-
cess occurs. External data, e.g., ground meteorological measurements,
GPS observations, Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
(MODIS), Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) water
vapor products and their combinations, can be used in the mitigation
of the tropospheric effects, with which about 20–40% improvements
can be expected (e.g., Ding et al., 2008; Z.H. Li et al., 2012; Z.W. Li
et al., 2012). Nevertheless, the satellite optical sensors (e.g., MODIS
and MERIS) can only make measurements during the cloud-free day-
light hours, which might not coincide with the SAR acquisition
time. Tropospheric artifacts simulated by numerical weather models
(NWM) are now viewed as a promising external data source for InSAR
tropospheric corrections due to their increased accuracy and spatial
and temporal resolutions (e.g., Jolivet et al., 2011; Foster et al., 2013).
Ionospheric artifacts are another intractable error in SAR and
InSAR images, especially for those acquired at high latitudes where
magnetic-field disturbances are strong (Gray et al., 2000). Induced by
the fluctuations of the electron density in the ionosphere, the artifacts
are more severe in long-wavelength (e.g., L-band) data than in the
short-wavelength (e.g., X-band and C-band) one. Ionospheric artifacts
are generally present in the Offset-Tracking and MAI azimuth measure-
ments as “azimuth streaks” and will also degrade the coherence of inter-
ferometric pair (Gray et al., 2000; Wegmüller et al., 2006; Hu et al.,
2012a). Directional filtering and interpolation procedure can be applied
to compensate such effects (Wegmüller et al., 2006; Hu et al., 2012a).
In addition, ionospheric artifacts will also introduce phase errors to
the D-InSAR interferogram, which are readily misinterpreted as orbital
errors or ground displacements. Raucoules and de Michele (2010) pro-
posed to correct these phase errors by exploiting the linear relationship
between the azimuth derivative of ionospheric phase screen (IPS)
and the Offset-Tracking derived azimuth measurements. Jung et al.
(2013a) reported a similar method that employed more accurate MAI
measurements to correct the ionospheric phase errors. However, the
performances of these methods highly depend on the diversity of the
spatial patterns between the ionospheric azimuth streaks and the inter-
esting deformation signals. Recently, Chen and Zebker (2012) found in
the Iceland, California and Hawaii experiments that the total electron
contents (TEC) detected by dual-frequency GPS observations have
good correlation with the ionospheric effects in the InSAR measurements
acquired at the same time. This indicates a possibility of using GPS TEC
data to correct for InSAR ionospheric artifacts.
5.2. Outlook of future developments
5.2.1. Towards more subtle and spatially detailed 3-D displacement
measurements
Although most of the previous researches were exploiting the
moderate-resolution SAR images to estimate the 3-D displacements,
the employment of high-resolution SAR images would be greatly in-
creased as the stop of service of the ENVISAT and ALOS satellites in
2011–2012. Operated in the X-band, the SAR data provided by the
TerraSAR-X and COSMO-SkyMed satellites are beneficial for monitoring
subtle surface deformation due to their relatively short wavelength and
up to 1 m spatial resolution. Besides, topographic residuals resulted
from high-resolution SAR data, a by-product of MT-InSAR algorithms,
allow for precise positioning of the observed coherent points
(Gernhardt et al., 2012). This is of great significance for showing the
stereoscopy of the 3-D displacements for such as single buildings.
However, some issues would be induced by the utilization of high-
resolution SAR data, which pose great challenges to InSAR data process-
ing and appeal to the designing of new processing strategies and
methods. For instance, the large discrepancy between the resolutions
of the new generation of SAR data and the commonly used external
DEM (e.g., up to 30 m for SRTM DEM and ASTER GDEM) will leave
great topographic residuals in the D-InSAR measurements. They can
be more severe in the built-up areas that are experiencing rapid urban-
ization. These topographic residuals, generally causing very dense phase
fringes in interferograms even with short perpendicular baselines, can-
not be well resolved by the existing MT-InSAR methods. In recent years,
ground-based (GB) InSAR, which has similar working principle with
spaceborne InSAR (but with the sensor installed on the ground), has
been extensively applied in the monitoring of landslide, glacier move-
ment and volcanic deformation (e.g., Werner et al., 2008; Luzi, 2010).
Flexibility in observation direction and sampling frequency enable
GB-InSAR to capture the horizontal and transient deformations that
are difficult for spaceborne InSAR to monitor. Therefore, it is quite prom-
ising to monitor more subtle and spatially detailed 3-D displacements by
integrating GB-InSAR and the high-resolution spaceborne InSAR. In ad-
dition, GB-InSAR can produce a terrain map with a much better spatial
resolution and accuracy than the open source DEM (Strozzi et al.,
2012), which will be very useful for removing or reducing the
topographic-related phase fringes in high-resolution InSAR processing.
5.2.2. Towards 3-D time series displacement measurements
It is also observed that the current studies almost concentrate on the
investigation of the 3-D displacement fields caused by a sudden event
(e.g., earthquake or volcano) or the averaged 3-D velocities of displace-
ment over a long period. For future research, more efforts should focus
on the estimations of 3-D displacement time series. In the work present-
ed by Guglielmino et al. in the Fringe 2011 workshop, the PS technique
(i.e., StaMPS (Hooper et al., 2007)) derived displacement evolutions and
GPS observations were analyzed by the SISTEM method for deriving 3-D
displacement time series of the Mt. Etna during 2007 and 2010. It is re-
ported that the dynamics of the volcano have been detected with high
temporal resolution, from which the surface deformation caused by
the pre-eruption, eruption and post-eruption were easily distinguished.
Hu et al. (2013c) proposed a framework for integrating multi-sensor,
multi-track and multi-temporal InSAR measurements to map the 3-D
deformations at the acquired date of each SAR image. In such a way,
we can fully utilize the available SAR acquisitions and significantly in-
crease the temporal resolution of the 3-D displacement measurements.
It is highly encouraged to include the measurements from both
Offset-Tracking and MAI techniques in the obtaining of 3-D time series
displacements. Casu et al. (2011) have applied the SBAS thought to con-
nect and adjust the multi-temporal Offset-Tracking measurements,
 J. Hu et al. / Earth-Science Reviews 133 (2014) 1–17
with which the azimuth and range directions' time series displacements
could be achieved at the same time. However, more rigorous multi-
temporal algorithms should be developed based on the Offset-
Tracking and/or MAI measurements to improve the accuracies and reli-
abilities of the azimuth and the follow on N–S time series displacement
estimations. For example, high quality points can be selected as persis-
tent or quasi persistent scatterers based on the offset statistics (Zhang
et al., 2011a), which can be tracked instead of all points to enhance
the quality of the Offset-Tracking derived azimuth measurements.
Ionospheric artifacts can also be better mitigated in Offset-Tracking
and MAI measurements by exploiting their temporal characteristics in
addition to the spatial ones in the multi-temporal model.
6. Conclusions
Past decades have witnessed InSAR becoming one of most popular
geodetic techniques for mapping ground deformation. However, the
InSAR LOS measurement cannot fully capture the actual surface defor-
mation that generally occurs in the three-dimension space. Several ap-
proaches, which have been well developed to exploit the potential of
InSAR for 3-D surface displacement determination, are presented in
this review. Some of the methods are benefited from the azimuth mea-
surements derived from the Offset-Tracking or MAI techniques, but only
suitable to investigate the large displacements caused by earthquake,
volcanic eruption, glacier movement, etc. Some of the methods are
developed by the integration of InSAR and GPS data, owing to their com-
plements in space and time. Other methods are based on the knowledge
of prior information on ground deformation. Since each of the ap-
proaches has its strengths and weaknesses, the most favorable approach
for estimating 3-D displacements from InSAR measurements should be
chosen according to the features and/or the types of surface deforma-
tion as well as the usability of SAR and external data. In the future,
more effective methods should be developed in this research area to im-
prove the accuracy and the temporal resolution of the estimated 3-D
displacements.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for the construc-
tive comments and suggestions. The research was supported by the Na-
tional Natural Science Foundation of China (Project Nos.: 41222027,
41304011 and 41374013), Hunan Provincial Natural Science Founda-
tion of China (No. 13JJ1006), and the Research Grants Council of the
Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Project Nos.: PolyU 5154/
10E and 5381/13E).
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