Abstract
Long range surveillance of infrastructure is a critical need in numerous security applications, both civilian and military.
Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) continues to provide high resolution radar images in all weather conditions from remote
distances. As well, Interferometric SAR (InSAR) and Differential Interferometric SAR (D-InSAR) have become
powerful tools adding high resolution elevation and change detection measurements. State of the art SAR systems based
on dual-use satellites are capable of providing ground resolutions of one meter; while their airborne counterparts obtain
resolutions of 10 cm. D-InSAR products based on these systems could produce cm-scale vertical resolution image
products.
Deformation monitoring of railways, roads, buildings, cellular antennas, power structures (i.e., power lines, wind
turbines, dams, or nuclear plants) would benefit from improved resolution, both in the ground plane and vertical
direction. The ultimate limitation to the achievable resolution of any imaging system is its wavelength. State-of-the art
SAR systems are approaching this limit. The natural extension to improve resolution is to thus decrease the wavelength,
i.e. design a synthetic aperture system in a different wavelength regime. One such system offering the potential for vastly
improved resolution is Synthetic Aperture Ladar (SAL). This system operates at infrared wavelengths, ten thousand
times smaller than radar wavelengths.
This paper presents a laboratory demonstration of a scaled-down infrastructure deformation monitoring with an
Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Ladar (IFSAL) system operating at 1.5 μm. Results show sub-millimeter precision on
the deformation applied to the target.
