A Covariance-Based Approach to Merging InSAR and GNSS Displacement Rate Measurements

This paper deals with the integration of deformation rates derived from Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (InSAR) and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) data. The proposed approach relies on knowledge of the variance/covariance of both InSAR and GNSS measurements so that they may be combined accounting for the spectral properties of their errors, hence preserving all spatial frequencies of the deformation detected by the two techniques. The variance/covariance description of the output product is also provided. A performance analysis is carried out on realistic simulated scenarios in order to show the boundaries of the technique. The proposed approach is finally applied to real data. Five Sentinel-1A/B stacks acquired over two different areas of interest are processed and discussed. The first example is a merged deformation map of the northern part of the Netherlands for both ascending and descending geometries. The second example shows the deformation at the junction between the North and East Anatolian Fault using three consecutive descending stacks.