On the Treatment of the Reference Image for InSAR Parameter Estimation for Point Scatterers

Abstract

InSAR enables the estimation of spatio-temporal displacements, relative to a reference point and a reference epoch, here defined as the mother image. When dealing with time series, there are several options to treat the mother image in computing and plotting the temporal phase differences, producing distinctly different results, in terms of the estimated displacement parameters and their precision. Here we review the three approaches mostly encountered in literature, discuss the implications of the different approaches, and recommend the 'embracing mother' approach for standard InSAR analyses and visualizations.