I.D.I.O.T.

: A FREE AND EASY-TO-USE SOFTWARE TOOL FOR DINSAR ANALYSIS

A. Reigber, E. Erten, S. Guillaso, and O. Hellwich
Berlin University of Technology, Computer Vision and Remote Sensing
Franklinstr. 28/29 (FR3-1), D-10587 Berlin, Germany
Tel.: ++49-30314-23276, Fax: ++49-30314-21104, E-mail: anderl@fpk.tu-berlin.de

ABSTRACT
This paper presents the I.D.I.O.T. (InSAR Deformation
Inspection and Observation Tool) software, developed
by the Computer Vision and Remote Sensing Group of
the Berlin University of Technology. The purpose of
I.D.I.O.T. is to ease as much as possible the generation
of differential SAR interferograms, even for complete
novices in SAR interferometry. The generation of differential interferograms from ENVISAT-ASAR data is simplified to choice of files of appropriate IMS (single look
complex) files. From these files, displacement maps are
produced without further user interaction. I.D.I.O.T. is
programmed in IDL (Interactive Data Language); a binary edition for non-commercial purposes is provided
free-of-charge via the Internet. The current version of
I.D.I.O.T. supports ENVISAT-IMS as input data and generates output in png and rat format.
Several examples of deformation maps derived with
I.D.I.O.T. over test sites in Iran, Kyrgyzstan and SaudiArabia will be presented, demonstrating the processing
accuracy of I.D.I.O.T.
Key words: SAR, DInSAR, subsidence.

1.

INTRODUCTION

generated by the imaging geometry, dif f the differential deformation pattern, atm the atmospheric effects,
err errors due to inaccurate orbit and topographic height
information, and noise the noise contribution. In DInSAR analysis, one is usually interested in the deformation pattern dif f , which requires to eliminate all the
other contributions. The topography and orbit error as
well as the atmospheric effect, described by err and
atm are usually unknown and are neglected. The flatearth component f lat can be calculated from the imaging geometry, while the elimination of the topographic
term topo requires precise knowledge of imaging geometry and ground topography.
Although the above expression appears simple, it is a
common assumption that DInSAR analyses are complicated and require an experienced user, as well as expensive specialised software packages. Consequently, in
many cases, potential users are scared off by the alleged
complexity and high demands of differential SAR interferometry. However, in practice this is not really true:
As long as the imaging geometry is precisely known,
differential SAR interferometry is an extremely straightforward technique. With the availability of precise orbit information as well as the global digital elevation
model (DEM) of the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission
(SRTM), control of imaging geometry became a rather
simple task, which can be automatised to a high degree.

= topo +f lat +dif f +atm +err +noise (1)

I.D.I.O.T. is such a software package for fully automatic

generation of differential SAR interferograms with a minimum amount of user interaction. Its main purpose is to
simplify as much as possible the generation of differential SAR interferograms. This is achieved by a fully automatic handling of the SAR data, orbits and topography information. The user has only to specify a reasonable pair
of SAR data sets. While processing the data, all steps are
implemented having maximum interferogram quality and
precision in mind. This includes in particular a topography adaptive co-registration, range-adaptive D OPPLERfiltering and topography adaptive filtering of the baseline
decorrelation. From the derived interferograms, several
meaningful maps and colour overlays for visual interpretation are automatically generated.

where topo denotes the interferometric phase caused by

terrain topography, f lat the so-called flat-earth phase

In the following, the processing strategy is I.D.I.O.T. is

briefly outlined.

In recent years, differential interferometry (DInSAR) using space-borne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensors
has become an established technique for detecting and
monitoring centimetre-scale deformations of the earths
surface, as well as glacier flows and land slides [1]. DInSAR is the study of interference patterns between two
SAR images acquired from relatively similar positions.
After precise co-registration of the two images, the measured phase difference between two corresponding pixels
can be expressed as

_____________________________________________________
Proc. Envisat Symposium 2007, Montreux, Switzerland
2327 April 2007 (ESA SP-636, July 2007)

Figure 2. Synchronisation of DEM and master image

Figure 1. Block diagram of the I.D.I.O.T. processing

chain
2.

PROCESSING STRATEGY

The quality of differential interferograms is highly based

on geometric configuration of satellite orbits and the
ground topography. Therefore, I.D.I.O.T. uses a rigorous geometric approach based on precise orbit information and SRTM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) elevation data. From these data, precise co-registration information, as well as the topographic phase components,
can directly be estimated and deformation maps are computed without further inputs. In order to achieve the
maximum coherence, I.D.I.O.T. includes various aspects
of advanced InSAR processing, including range adaptive
D OPPLER-filtering, topography adaptive range filtering,
residual sub-pixel image registration and high-precision
interferogram generation. Output is generated as raster
images (png format) in reduced resolution and as binary
images (RAT format) in full-resolution. The entire block
diagram of I.D.I.O.T. is shown in Fig. 1
In the following, the different tasks of data processing are
described more in detail.

2.1.

Master file processing

The first step in the processing is the extraction of the

complex image data of the master track. Additionally, the
orbit information is extracted from the data header, or, alternatively, using external precise orbit files. After reading the SLC data, for each image pixel the corresponding
geographical coordinates are calculated, which requires
to project the DEM information onto the slant-range geometry of the master image. To do so, first the required
SRTM patches are mosaicked together. Then, as depicted

in Fig. 2, for each pixel of the resulting DEM, the shortest line-of-sight (LOS) distance rmin between the DEM
pixel and the master orbit is calculated. The respective
slant-range pixel number prg of this DEM element can
then be derived using
prg = (rmin r0 )/sr

(2)

with r0 denoting the range delay distance and sr the

slant-range resolution of the sensor. The azimuth pixel
number paz is directly determined by the intersection of
the estimated LOS direction with the master orbit. Once
all the prg , paz and corresponding topographic heights
are known, the DEM is projected to slant-range geometry at full-resolution using a triangulation between the
known data points.

2.2.

Slave file processing

The second step in the processing is the precise coregistration of the slave image onto the geometry of
the master image. At this stage of the processing,
the master geometry is already fully determined; for
each image pixel the precise height is known from the
backward-geocoded DEM. Therefore, the slave image
co-registration in range can be reduced to a measure of
the difference in slant-range distances between a given
pixel of the backward-geocoded DEM and the two orbits.
Similarly, the co-registration in azimuth is the difference
in the intersection points of the two LOS directions with
master orbit and slave orbit, respectively [2].
In Fig. 3, this technique is illustrated: First, the precise
slant-range distances of the pixels in the master image are
calculated from their 3D position in space, known from
the backward-geocoded DEM. Then, using the slave orbit, it is calculated which slant-range distance the points
possess in the slave image and where the slave LOS intersects with the slave orbit. From this information, the
entire vector field of image offsets can be derived without
touching the image data itself.
On minor problem of this approach is that one depends
on the quality of the orbits and on precise timing infor-

Figure 3. Coregistration of master and slave

mation in the data headers. In practice, to correct for
such errors, it is necessary to perform a calibration of a
global offset between the images. In I.D.I.O.T. is done by
an additional residual offset correction based on a single
cross-correlation measurement between the image amplitudes, although it has been found that in most cases the
estimated residual error is in the order of only 1/10th of a
pixel.
After the co-registration parameters are known, the slave
image is resampled to the master geometry by an interpolation based on oversampled cubic-convolution.

2.3.

Interferometric processing

The most important step in interferometric processing is

the generation of the interferogram itself, which has to
be performed with the maximum quality in mind. In
I.D.I.O.T., first a range dependent filtering of the different D OPPLER-centroids is performed. Then the image
is range-filtered using a topography adaptive approach
[3]. This ensures an optimal coherence, even in case of
very large baselines and in the presence of steep topography. In addition to spectral filtering, the interferogram
is filtered in time-domain by a low-pass filter in azimuth,
which compensates for the different ground resolution in
range (20m) and azimuth (4.5m).
During processing, several versions of the interferometric phase are generated: The pure one, containing
flat-earth, topography and deformation, the topographic
phase after removal of the phase component due to the
earths ellipsoid, and the differential phase after correcting for ellipsoid and topography. For topography compensation, again the backward-geocoded DEM derived
from the SRTM data is used. Additionally to the phase
images, a coherence map is calculated from the filtered
topography corrected images.

2.4.

Generation of output images

After finishing the data processing, I.D.I.O.T. automatically generates several images with reduced resolution in

Figure 4. The graphical user interface of I.D.I.O.T.

png format for direct control of the output and/or inclusion in presentations. Additionally, a binary version of
the results is provided in RAT format [4][5]. An overview
of all generated files is given in Tab. 1.
For the moment, I.D.I.O.T. does not perform phase unwrapping, i.e. the derived deformation maps are mainly
thought for visual interpretation. Geocoding is also not
performed; all output images are in the slant-range geometry of the master image.

3.

GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE

The purpose of I.D.I.O.T. is to ease as much as possible

the generation of differential SAR interferograms, even
for complete novices in SAR interferometry. Therefore,
the graphical user interface is very simple and basically
provide only selectors for master and slave files. Additionally, one has to set the output directory and the directory containing the SRTM patches. If the usage of
precise orbits is desired, also the directory with the TU
Delft orbit file and the path to their getorb tool has to
be provided. After starting the process, all processing is
performed automatically. In Fig. 4, the graphical user interface of I.D.I.O.T. is depicted.

4.

EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

I.D.I.O.T. in its current form has been tested with several ENVISAT data sets. In the following, some examples should be given, demonstrating the the processing
accuracy of I.D.I.O.T. and the look of the automatically
generated output.
The first test-site is the region of Bam (Iran), where a
major earthquake occurred on December 26th 2003. The

Table 1. Overview of the generated output files

filename
amplitude_master.*
amplitude_slave.*
amplitude_rgb.*
coherence.*
amplitude_coherence.*
phase.*
phase_flat.*
phase_dinsar.*
amplitude_dinsar.*
amplitude_phase.*
amplitude_topography.*
coherence_dinsar.*

description
image amplitude master
image amplitude slave
RGB composite (amplitude master, amplitude slave, mean amplitude)
interferometric coherence
CMY composite (amplitude master, amplitude slave, coherence)
interferometric phase
interferometric phase ellipsoid corrected
differential (DInSAR) phase
overlay mean amplitude with differential phase
overlay mean amplitude with interferometric phase ellipsoid corrected
overlay mean amplitude with topography
differential (DInSAR) phase darkened by coherence values

two investigated image pairs have temporal baselines of

35 and 70 days. The first image pair has a very large
spatial baseline of 521m, which is considered not to be
ideal for DInSAR analyses. Nevertheless, as shown in
Fig. 5, I.D.I.O.T. was capable of producing highly coherent fringe patterns in both cases. The deformation pattern
of the earthquake is clearly visible in the overlay of mean
amplitude with the differential phase. Despite of the different imaging geometry, both deformation patterns are
very similar1 , which demonstrates the accurate compensation of the topographic term. Visually compared to results of this test-site found in literature [6], the derived
results appear practically identical.
The second test-site is located in Kyrgyzstan and shows
parts of the Inyltshik glacier system located in the TienShan mountain range with topographic heights up to
7000m. In Fig. 6, some examples of I.D.I.O.T. derived
output is shown. On the left side, two overlays of image amplitude and deformation patterns are depicted, acquired with different baselines and temporal offsets. In
both cases, the glacier in the top part of the image appears decorrelated, while a deformation pattern can be
observed in the lower part of the image. This example
demonstrates, that I.D.I.O.T. is able to reliably derive interferometric information even in case of steep topography and very large baseline (here 747m). On the right
side of Fig. 6, an automatically generated CMY overlay of image amplitude and interferometric coherence is
shown. In this case, it allows to clearly locate the position of the glacier tongue, since the melting and moving
ice of the glacier appears decorrelated due to temporal
decorrelation.
The third test-site is located around the Abqaiq oil field
in the Ghawar region of Saudi Arabia. In Fig. 7, some results from a study carried out using I.D.I.O.T. is shown.
Here it has been tried to generate an interferogram from
data with a very large temporal baseline of about 1.5
years in order to analyse presumed ground subsidence
due to oil extraction. As expected, the derived coherence is relatively low in most part of the image, which is
1 the

inverse colouring results from an inverse baseline direction

due to temporal decorrelation in the sandy desert around

the oil production sites. Over stable areas, a good coherence could be achieved. The DInSAR phase shows some
areas, where ground subsidence is probably happening.
However, more investigations are necessary for a complete analysis of the observed effects.

5.

AVAILABILITY / TERMS OF USE

I.D.I.O.T. represents a subset of the internal InSAR software developed at the Berlin University of Technology,
which is released as free software. It has certain limitation compared to commercial InSAR packages: As mentioned above, the free version accepts only ENVISATIMS data as input and generates only output in png format. Geocoding and phase unwrapping are missing.
I.D.I.O.T. runs on UNIX (Linux, Mac OS X, UNIX) and
Windows platforms. Further functionality will probably
be provided in a commercial version.
I.D.I.O.T. has been entirely programmed in IDL (interactive data language) and will be distributed in a precompiled version (sav-file). To run it, the freely available
IDL virtual machine is necessary [7]. I.D.I.O.T. will be
provided free-of-charge via the internet:
http://www.cv.tu-berlin.de/idiot
Its usage is completely free for non-commercial and educational purposes. Detailed license regulation will be
available when I.D.I.O.T. is released.

6.

CONCLUSIONS

With I.D.I.O.T. for the first time a free and easy-touse DInSAR tool becomes available, which requires almost no knowledge about InSAR. It is fully automatic
and needs the user only to select the correct input files.

Figure 5. Automatically generated results of the Bam earthquake in Iran. Top left: Overlay of image amplitude with
topography. Top middle and right: Derived coherence map and deformation pattern at 521m spatial baseline. Bottom
left: Overlay of image amplitude with ellipsoid corrected interferometric phase. Bottom middle and right: Derived
coherence map and deformation pattern at 8m spatial baseline.

Figure 6. Automatically generated DInSAR results of the Inyltshik glacier in Kyrgystan: Both pairs with very large
baselines yield similar results with good quality.

Figure 7. Presumed ground subsidence in the Ghawar region of Saudi-Arabia.

I.D.I.O.T. achieves very high coherence even in case of

non-optimal baseline constellations and delivers highly
accurate interferometric results. As a result, I.D.I.O.T.
might be the ideal tool for everybody interested in DInSAR deformation maps, but uninterested in the technical
details of SAR interferometry and not willing to purchase
expensive software for just a few trials.
It is important to note that standard DInSAR analyses, as
they can be performed with I.D.I.O.T., might be significantly influenced by atmospheric errors. Therefore, in
many cases the derived deformation maps can only serve
for visual analysis. For precise measurement of subsidence rates, advanced DInSAR techniques are required
[8].
I.D.I.O.T. has also several disadvantages. First of all, it
is relatively slow, which is a result of a very precise handling of the data. Depending on the image size, typical processing times are about 2h on a 2GHz standard
PC. Due to its fully automatic nature, I.D.I.O.T. is also
very inflexible. The generated output images are of good
quality, but the way I.D.I.O.T. is preparing them is fixed
and there is no way of influencing the processing. In its
current form, I.D.I.O.T. is specific for ENVISAT and not
supporting any other sensor. However, support for ERS1/2 is in development.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to thank Prof. Bitzer, who provided the results of the Ghawar region. His project is supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) under
project Bi 1074/2-1 and by the ESA category-1 project
3781.

REFERENCES
[1] R. Bamler and P. Hartl: Synthetic aperture radar
interferometry, Inverse Problems, Vol. 14, R1-R54,
1998.
[2] G. Fornaro, M. Manunta, F. Serafino, P. Berardino
and E. Sansosti: Advances in multipass SAR image registration, Proceedings of IGARSS05, Seoul,
South-Korea, 2005
[3] A. Reigber: Range Dependent Spectral Filtering to
Minimize the Baseline Decorrelation in Airborne SAR
Interferometry, Proceeding of IGARSS99, Hamburg,
Germany, pp. 1721-1723, 1999
[4] http://www.cv.tu-berlin.de/rat
[5] A. Reigber and O. Hellwich: RAT (Radar Tools):
A free SAR Image Analysis Software Package, Proceedings of EUSAR04, Ulm, pp. 997-1000, 2004
[6] Y. Xia: Bam earthquake: Surface deformation measurement using radar interferometry, Acta Seismologica Sinica, Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 451-459. 2005.
[7] http://www.ittvis.com/idlvm

[8] A. Ferretti, C. Prati and F. Rocca: Nonlinear Subsidence Rate Estimation Using Permanent Scatterers in Differential SAR Interferometry, Transactions
on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Vol. 38, No. 5,
pp. 2202-2212, 2000