Near-Real-Time InSAR Phase Estimation for Large-Scale Surface Displacement Monitoring

Operational near-real-time monitoring of Earth’s surface deformation using Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) requires processing algorithms that efficiently incorporate new acquisitions without reprocessing historical archives. We present a sequential phase linking approach using compressed single-look-complex images (SLCs) capable of producing surface displacement estimates within hours of the time of a new acquisition. Our key algorithmic contribution is a mini-stack reference scheme that maintains phase consistency across processing batches without adjusting or re-estimating previous time steps, enabling straightforward operational deployment. We introduce online methods for persistent and distributed scatterer identification that adapt to temporal changes in surface properties through incremental amplitude statistics updates. The processing chain incorporates multiple complementary metrics for pixel quality that are reliable for small SLC stack sizes, as well as an L1-norm network inversion to limit propagation of unwrapping errors across the time series. We use our algorithm to produce the OPERA Surface Displacement from Sentinel-1 (DISP-S1) product, the first continental-scale surface displacement product over North America. Validation against GPS measurements and InSAR residual analysis demonstrates millimeter-level agreement in velocity estimates in varying environmental conditions. We also demonstrate our algorithm’s capabilities with a successful recovery of meter-scale co-eruptive displacement at Kilauea volcano during the 2018 eruption, as well as detection of subtle uplift at Three Sisters volcano, Oregon— a challenging environment for C-band InSAR due to dense vegetation and seasonal snow. We have made all software available as open source libraries, providing a significant advancement to the open scientific community’s ability to process large InSAR data sets in a cloud environment.