Ku-band Ground-based SAR Experiments

for Surface Deformation Monitoring

Koo Voon Chet, Lim Chee Siong, William Hii How Hsin, Lee Loong Wei,
Cheaw Wen Guey, Chua Ming Yam, Lim Tien Sze, Chan Yee Kit
Faculty of Engineering and Technology
Multimedia University
Melaka, Malaysia

AbstractContinuous monitoring of ground deformation on
high-risk areas is of great importance for the study of landslide
mechanisms as well as to serve as an early warning system before
the triggers of hazardous events. A new ground-based synthetic
aperture radar (GBSAR) has been developed and installed at
selected landslide-prone areas in Malaysia. The proposed system
operates at 17.2 GHz with high resolution change detection
capability using interferometry technique. This paper presents
the experimental results of the GBSAR in surface deformation
monitoring.
range and azimuth resolutions are 0.1875 m and 5.8 mrad (5.8
m at 1 km distance), respectively. The synthetic aperture is
realized by the movement of the radar unit along a high
precision linear-guided rail of 1500 mm length. The nominal
scan time is approximately 30 seconds to produce a two-
dimensional SAR image. An interferogram is formed by
computing the difference between the phase images of two
scans at different time intervals. The maximum observation
range is 4 km.

Index TermsGBSAR, Interferometric, Surface Deformation TABLE I. DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS

Monitoring
Design Parameters Specifications
I. INTRODUCTION Operating Frequency 17.2 GHz (Ku-band)
In recent years, weather-related mass movement activities Sweep bandwidth 800 MHz
have been reported due to the increase of extreme weather Waveform FMCW
events [1]-[2]. Hazards involving ground movements and Polarization Selectable (VV, VH, HH)
instabilities such as landslides, debris flows, rock slope Antenna gain 15 dBi (Pyramidal Horn)
failures, or ice avalanches can lead to considerable human and
Antenna 3dB beamwidth 20 (azimuth), 20 (elevation)
economic losses. Monitoring of ground movement and surface
deformation is therefore of great importance for the study of Range resolution 0.1875 m
landslide mechanism as well as to provide early warning before Azimuth resolution 5.8 mrad
the triggers of hazardous events. Conventional geodetic Synthetic length 1.5 m
surveying methods such as transit traverse survey, triangulation Sensing distance Up to 4000 m
method and total station could provide reasonable accuracy, Transmit power +26 dBm
but these methods are inefficient for large area observation and
Platform Ground-based, mounted on a high
during bad weather conditions. On the other hand, recent precision linear scanner
studies have shown the potential of ground-based synthetic Linear scanner Step size: 1 10 mm, scan time: ~30 s
aperture radar (GBSAR) in ground deformation monitoring
[3]-[6]. As compared to ground-truth instruments and optical
sensing instruments, GBSAR has the advantage of monitoring Figure 1 shows the functional block diagram of the GBSAR
wide area of coverage at all weather conditions, with high system. It consists of three major components, namely (1) Ku-
change detection capability in the order of sub-millimetres. band transceiver module, (2) embedded SAR processor
module, and (3) high precision linear scanning platform.
II. SYSTEM OVERVIEW The Ku-band transceiver is configured to implement a
Table 1 shows the technical specifications of the new Ku- linearly swept Frequency-Modulated Continuous Wave
band GBSAR system. The proposed system operates at 17.2 (FMCW) architecture. The baseband FMCW signal is
GHz with system bandwidth of 800 MHz. The polarization generated by a custom-designed direct digital synthesizer. This
configuration is selectable between VV, VH and HH, which signal is then up-converted to Ku-band (17.2 GHz), amplified
can form a full polarimetric SAR configuration. The antenna is and sent out through a transmitting horn antenna. The transmit
a pyramidal horn with nominal gain of 15 dBi and 3dB power is about +26 dBm. A directional coupler is used to
beamwidth of 20 in both azimuth and elevation planes. The couple a small portion of this power to the RF receivers

978-1-4673-7297-8/15/$31.00 2015
c IEEE 641
mixer. The receiving antenna is a miniature pyramidal horn
with 15 dBi gain and 20 beamwidth in both azimuth and
elevation planes. The received signals will be amplified and
mixed with a reference transmit signal to produce the down-
converted intermediate frequency (IF) signals.
Fig. 1. Functional Block Diagram of the GBSAR
The received IF signals will further be digitized and stored
onto an onboard solid-state hard disk. Upon completion of
every scan, the real-time SAR processor module will read the
raw data and perform 2D SAR image reconstruction. The
generated SAR image will then be stored and compared with
the next-scan image to yield temporal change detection. The
hardware prototype of the SAR processor module is shown in
Figure 2(a).
In order to achieve stable and linear movement at fine
resolution, a high precision linear scanning platform has been
developed. Figure 2(b) shows the hardware prototype of the
linear scanning platform. Its working length is 1500 mm and its
achievable step size is 1 mm. For a typical SAR acquisition, a
total of 150 range samples will be captured at a spatial interval
of 10 mm along azimuth direction.
(a) (b)
Fig. 2. GBSAR Hardware: (a) SAR Processor Module;
(b) High Precision Linear-Scanner
642 2015 IEEE 5th Asia-Pacific Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar(APSAR)
III. GBSAR EXPERIMENTS AND RESULTS
A series of ground experiments and measurements has been
conducted to verify the performance of the GBSAR. The first
test site is a slope with inclination angle of about 45 degrees.
The second test site is a construction area at Melaka. The third
test site is an actual landslide-prone area at Cameron Highland,
Malaysia. Triggers of ground movements and rock-falls have
been simulated to evaluate the effectiveness of the GBSAR in
deformation detection.
A. Experiment-1: Change Detection Capability
Figure 3 shows the measurement setup during the first
experiment at a slope with inclination angle of about 45
degrees. Trihedral corner reflectors are placed on the slope to
perform external calibration.
(a) GBSAR In Operation
(b) Test Site 1
Fig. 3. Experimental Setup for GBSAR
For every SAR acquisition, the GBSAR travels along its
azimuth direction and collects a total of 150 range samples at
every 10 mm interval. The echo of one single target within the
antenna beam will be present at every azimuth position and is
therefore defocused. After range compression, an ideal point
target appears at each pixel of the recorded raw image with the
same amplitude but the phase is a function of the antenna
position. Azimuth range compression is achieved by
multiplying the azimuth range sample with the complex
conjugate of the baseband reference signal at frequency
domain, and finally, the resultant signal is inverse-Fourier
transformed to obtain a focused image in both range and
azimuth domain.
A sample of the focused SAR image with single point target
is shown in Figure 4. The point target is then shifted by 10
mm for every subsequent scan, for 10 scans. The phase It is shown that the GBSAR is able to obtain a sufficiently high
difference d is extracted to compute the displacement dR by coherence (>0.9) between interferometric image pairs.
using the following equation:

dR = d / 4 (1)

where is the wavelength of the transmit frequency. The

measured displacement results are presented in Table 2. It is
clearly shown that the GBSAR is capable of detecting sub-
centimeter changes with error bound within 5 mm.

Fig. 5. Test Site 2

Fig. 4. Point Target Return

TABLE II. DISPLACEMENT MEASUREMENT RESULTS

Target Setup Measured Distance Error (mm)
Distance (mm) (mm)
10 11.6 1.6
20 21.7 1.7
30 31.6 1.6
40 42.1 2.1
50 51.6 1.6
60 62.0 2.0 Fig. 6. Interferometric Coherence Map
70 71.1 1.1
80 84.2 4.2 C. Experiment-3
90 93.4 3.4
The third test site is an actual landslide-prone area located
at Cameron Highland, Malaysia (see Figure 7). The area
B. Experiment-2: Phase Coherency affected by the landslide extends from an elevation of
approximately 1200 m a.s.l., up to 1350 m a.s.l. along the
Figure 5 shows the second test site, which is a construction
roadside. Its total width is about 150 m across the along track
area, located at Melaka. The GBSAR is used to perform
direction. The GBSAR is installed at an elevation of 1217 m
continuous monitoring of the study area at the rate of
a.s.l., in a stable area on the opposite side of the landslide area.
approximately 30 sec per scan. The interferometric coherence
The measurement range is centered at 1200 m and the swath
between temporal images is calculated through the following
width is 200 m. Geometric and radiometric calibrations have
expression:





been conducted using trihedral corner reflectors.













Measurement campaign was continuously carried out since
(2) September 2014. Figure 8 shows the geocoded location of the
test site and the mapping of displacement points on the digital
where I1 and I2 denote the complex SAR images forming the elevation model (DEM). The InSAR data obtained, together
interferogram, and the brackets < > mean the average value of with the ground-truth measurement data (such as rain rate) will
the argument. A sample result of the interferometric coherence further be analyzed to understand the behavior of the landslide
map for two consecutive scanned image is depicted in Figure 6. dynamic.

2015 IEEE 5th Asia-Pacific Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar(APSAR) 643



IV. CONCLUSIONS
 A compact, miniaturized Ku-band GBSAR has been

designed and developed for surface deformation monitoring. A
series of field experiments has been conducted to verify the

performance of the new GBSAR sensor. The GBSAR is
 currently used for landslide monitoring at Peninsular of

Malaysia.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENT
  This work is partially sponsored by the Ministry of


Education, Malaysia. Special thanks to Slope Engineering
Branch of Malaysian Public Works Department for providing

the access to the study area.



Fig. 7. Test Site 3

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644 2015 IEEE 5th Asia-Pacific Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar(APSAR)