Ground-Based SAR Multistage Mountain Slope
Interferometric Phase Unwrapping
Huang Zengshu, Sun Jinping, Yuan Yunneng
1
Department of Electronics & Information Engineering
Beihang University
BeiJing, China
zengshu_huang@163.com
AbstractPhase unwrapping is an important part in the
process of InSAR signal processing. When ground-based SAR is
used for multistage mountain slope deformation monitoring, the
mountain slopes are always separated by slope ladders. So the
interferometric phase of every slope must be unwrapped by path-
following methods respectively. In view of the multistage slope
phase unwrapping, this paper proposed a mask branch-cut
segmentation phase unwrapping algorithm through improving
on the Goldsteins mask branch-cut algorithm. Then a defor-
mation monitoring experiment for multistage mountain slope was
carried out, which is to verify the validity and feasibility of the
unwrapping algorithm.
Index TermsPhase unwrapping, ground-based SAR, multi-
stage mountain slope, deformation monitoring.
I. INTRODUCTION
Natural geological disasters such as landslide, mudslide and
man-induced mine collapse, landslide and other mountain
deformations seriously endanger the personal safety and
property of people. Ground-based SAR (GB-SAR), which uses
active microwave remote sensing observation mode, can make
continuous plane measurement by radar interferometry to
extract the deformation values and overall deformation
characteristics of monitoring area. And GB-SAR has the
advantages of all-time, all-weather work, high precision etc.,
which has good prospects in the field of safety production
monitoring [1]. In the process of GB-SAR interferometry, the
obtained interferometric phases are all limited in (-, ] and the
deformation values are uncertain, so the obtained phases are
only wrapped phases [2]. Phase unwrapping, which is to
recover the lost phase information from the wrapped phase and
obtain the real interferometric phase, is one of the key
problems in GB-SAR interferometric process.
When ground-based SAR is used for multistage mountain
slope deformation monitoring, as the radar cannot detect the
slope ladders, a large number of unstable interferometric
phases arise in the interferometric phase image, and we call the
unstable phase ladder phase. If we continuously unwrap the
whole phase image by path-following methods, the ladder
phase will participate in the phase unwrapping and the
unwrapped result will be wrong. As the slopes are actually
978-1-4673-7297-8/15/$31.00 2015
c IEEE
Tan Weixian, Huang Pingping
2
Radar Research Institute
Inner Mongolia University of Technology
Hohhot, China
Wang Yanping
3
China Academy of Safety Science and Technology
BeiJing, China
independent of each other, interferometric phases of each slope
need be unwrapped respectively. Therefore, in view of the
multistage slope phase unwrapping, this paper proposed a mask
branch-cut segmentation phase unwrapping algorithm through
improving on the Goldsteins mask branch-cut algorithm. The
mask branch-cut segmentation unwrapping algorithm uses
mask branch-cuts to split each slope and unwrap each slope
phases respectively. Then complete and accurate unwrapped
phase image can be got through splicing.
In this paper, a phase unwrapping algorithm for multistage
mountain slope is proposed and the deformation monitoring
experiment of multistage mountain slope was carried out to
verify the validity and feasibility of the unwrapping algorithm.
The rest of paper is organized as follows. In section 2, the mask
branch-cut segmentation unwrapping algorithm for multistage
slope is introduced. The deformation monitoring experiment is
carried out, and the experimental data is used for the phase
unwrapping algorithm in section 3. Finally, section 4 concludes
the paper.
II. MASK BRANCH-CUT SEGMENTATION PHASE UNWRAPPING
ALGORITHM
According to the cyclicity of the interferometric phase, the
relationship between real phase and wrapped phase can be
described as follows,
i , j = i , j 2k i , j , k i , j is an integer array.
< i, j , i = 1,2 ! M , j = 1,2 ! N (1)
where i, j is real phase and i, j is wrapped phase [3-5].
The basic theory of path-following phase unwrapping
described as follows, in the interferometric phase image, the
phase gradient should be less than ideally. So the wrapped
phase can be integrated directly by path-following algorithm.
Providing phase is a two-dimensional continuous function, and
the gradient along a path C from one point r0 to any point are
given, the phase of point r is,
(r ) = dr + (r0 )
(2)
C
where is phase gradient, (r0 ) is starting phase, (r ) is
34
ending phase [2,6].
However, owing to the presence of residues and signal
undersampling, it is impossible to meet the ideal condition
everywhere [7]. Residues exist whenever the sum of the
wrapped phase differences around a closed path is not zero,
which make branch-cut method generate path-dependent
results [4]. So the residues must be detected, and the branch-
cuts are inserted between residues to balance residue charge.
Then the unwrapping integral path will bypass the branch-cut
to avoid error propagation.
A. Identify the residues
Residue is the breakpoint which can lead to partial
derivative discontinuity of the interferometric phase. In the
process of phase unwrapping, the residues will lead to phase
error propagation throughout the integral path. In the
interferometric phase image, the more number and the more
intensive distribution of the residues, the more unfavorable to
interferometric phase solution. The calculation principle of
residues is to integrate around four adjacent points [3, 5].
Fig. 1. Residue integral path
1 = (m + 1, n) (m, n)
2 = (m + 1, n + 1) (m + 1, n)
3 = (m, n + 1) (m + 1, n + 1)
4 = (m, n) (m, n + 1) (3)
4 to reduce residues. Then the interferometric phases of multi-
 q = w(
k =1
k )  (4)
where w( x) = x 2  w(x)  of the mask regions always arise in the phase image and the
If q0, then the pixel is marked as residues; q=2, the
pixel is marked as positive residue; q=-2, the pixel is marked
as negative residue [2]. w represents the wrapping operation.
Moving 22 matrix window until all residues found in the
whole image.
B. Generating mask image and branch-cuts
In the phase unwrapping process, some regions seriously
loss correlation (e.g. ladders between slopes in this experiment)
and the regions result in discontinuous phases. We can use a
mask to cover up these regions so that these regions do not
participate in unwrapping. The method for generating a mask
commonly used threshold method, pixel quality value is less
than the threshold value is marked as "0", pixel quality value is
greater than the threshold value is marked as "1" [8]. In this
paper, coherent coefficient image is used as quality image to
generate mask image. For every resolution pixel, taking the
pixel as the center of the window (size is w l ). Then the
correlation coefficient can be expressed as follows,
2015 IEEE 5th Asia-Pacific Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar(APSAR)
w l
M (i, j )S
i =1 j =1
*
(i, j )
=
w l w l
2 2
i =1 j =1
M (i, j )
i =1 j =1
S (i, j )
(5)
where M(i,j) is the pixel of the main radar complex image, S(i,j)
is the pixel of the slave radar complex image [9].
Mask quality image can be obtained by setting a reasonable
threshold to coherent coefficient image. After detecting the
residues, generating mask pixel across low-quality regions
relying on the guide of quality image [4]. When the residues
connected by the generated mask pixel are positive and
negative balanced or the mask pixel reached the image
boundary, the mask pixel stop growing [10]. Then the mask
cuts should be thinned, and the mask region will decrease. The
remaining mask cuts will be taken as mask branch-cuts.
C. Path-integrate around the mask branch-cuts
Mask branch-cut algorithm combined the advantages of
both Goldsteins branch-cut algorithm and quality-guided path-
following algorithm. The quality image can guild the
placement of the branch cuts so that branch cuts can find the
optical path integral and avoid the unwrapping errors
propagation, which are introduced by the unbalanced residues
[11]. Mask branch-cuts can be limited in low-quality phase
region so that the error propagation cause by misplacing the
branch cuts can be avoided. If the pixel is out of the branch
cuts, then a known pixel phase is used to unwrap the pixel. The
pixel in the branch-cuts will remain to be unwrapped finally.
This integral method is called flood fill algorithm [4].
D. Split unwrapping and Image splicing
The interferometric phase adaptive filter is done firstly
stage mountain slope are unwrapped by the mask branch-cuts
algorithm. Due to the existence of the slope ladder, a large area
whole slope is split into multistage slopes and discontinuous.
The interferometric phases of every slope need be unwrapped
respectively, then splicing the real unwrapped phase image into
a complete and accurate unwrapped phase image. Furthermore,
the mountain slope deformation can be obtained.
III. MULTISTAGE MOUNTAIN SLOPE DEFORMATION
MONITORING EXPERIMENT
In order to verify the validity and feasibility of the
proposed algorithm, the deformation monitoring experiment
for multistage mountain slope was carried out. The GB-SAR
system is shown in figure 2. The monitoring scene is shown in
figure 3. The system operating parameter is shown in table I.
In this experiment, the GB-SAR system can get one SAR
image in 20 minutes, and the interval time between two
images is 10 minutes. We continuously collected data in 11
days to get SAR images series so that we can finish the
continuous deformation monitoring for mountain slope.
35
 shown in figure 7. In the image, the multistage slope phases
were unwrapped smoothly, and the ladder phase did not
participated in the unwrapping process. Comparing the final
deformation result with the measuring result of total station, the
accuracy of the unwrapping algorithm was verified.

Fig. 2. GB-SAR system


Fig. 4. Wrapped phase

Fig. 3. Monitoring scene

TABLE I. SYSTEM PARAMETERS

System Parameters Value

Frequency Band Ku

Frequency Bandwidth(MHz) 500

Length of Synthetic Aperture(m) 2.8

Monitoring Range(m) 300-2000

Resolution( m )
D 0.3 0.2

In the experiment, two radar single look complex images

 
with interval of eight hours were selected to make co-
Fig. 5. Residues
registration and interferometry. The original interferometric
phase image is shown in figure 4. A large number of unstable
ladder phases arose in the original phase image, which lead to
the discontinuity of the slope interferometric phase. So the
slope phase must be unwrapped respectively. The residues
detected from the original phase image are shown in figure 5,
where 1 represents residue. The correlation coefficient of the
single look complex images, which is used to generate mask
quality image, is shown in figure 6.
After the adaptive filter, the interferometric phases of the
multistage mountain slope were unwrapped by the mask
branch-cuts algorithm. Owing to the existence of the slope
ladders, a large area of the mask region arose in the phase
image, and the slope was split into multistage slope and
discontinuous. Every mountain slope was unwrapped
respectively, then splicing the real wrapped phase image into a
complete and accurate unwrapped phase image. The 
unwrapped phase image after splicing and pixel selection is Fig. 6. Correlation coefficient

36 2015 IEEE 5th Asia-Pacific Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar(APSAR)


 Sensing Letter, vol.9, No.3, pp. 338-342, May 2012.
Fig. 7. Unwrapped phase
IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, GB-SAR system is used for the multistage
mountain slope deformation monitoring experiment and a
mask branch-cut segmentation phase unwrapping algorithm is
proposed. Through processing the experimental data and
comparing the results with the other measurements, we can see
that the algorithm can effectively solve the problem that the
ladder interference phase participated in phase unwrapping
lead to the unwrapping error propagation in the whole phase
image, which lay the foundation for accurate deformation
retrieval of discontinuous multistage mountain slope.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank China Academy of Safety
Science and Technology in Beijing and Radar Research
Institute, Inner Mongolia University of Technology in Hohhot,
China for helping to finish the experiment and providing GB-
SAR data. This work was supported by Program for Young
Talents of Science and Technology in Universities of Inner
Mongolia Autonomous Region (NJYT-14-B09).
2015 IEEE 5th Asia-Pacific Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar(APSAR)
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