COBIS: Opportunistic C-Band Bistatic SAR Differential Interferometry

Monitoring large built structures, landslides, volcanoes, or glaciers implies relative height measurements and line-of-sight (LOS) displacement measurements, which are typically performed with monostatic spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensors. In this case, for each satellite that illuminates a given location, we can usually exploit only the information available from one ascending/descending orbit, and if the satellite uses multiple subswaths, the information is obtained only from one subswath per orbit. A bistatic configuration with spaceborne transmitter and fixed ground-based (GB) receiver opens the possibility to exploit the information available from more than one orbit and one subswath per orbit. Additionally, such a configuration offers new perspectives for target tracking and characterization (e.g., multiple LOSs and bistatic scattering signatures). This article presents an opportunistic C-band bistatic SAR differential interferometry architecture that uses a multichannel GB stationary receiver and a separate transmitter, which can be either the Sentinel-1A/B satellite, used opportunistically, or a specially designed GB sliding transmitter. The combination of the operation modes based on spaceborne and GB transmitter allows monitoring a small critical area of interest with many acquisitions triggered by the GB transmitter and surveying of the whole surrounding area with a small number of acquisitions corresponding to the satellites passes. The hardware platforms are presented along with the bistatic interferometric processing flow, and the potential of the proposed architecture is assessed in the context of monitoring large built structures.