IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - June 2020 - 111

countries or regions. In addition, most of the oil and gas
fields monitored by InSAR technology are on land. For offshore oil fields, the spatial density of measurement points
is low and susceptible to tropospheric disturbances. Therefore, there is still much work needed to be done to accurately monitor the movement and deformation of oil field
platforms using InSAR technology.
This article aims to improve awareness of the feasibility and potential of InSAR technology in oil production
deformation monitoring by using a real application case.
It indicates that InSAR technology is less affected by the
monitoring environment and weather than traditional
monitoring methods, is able to monitor the deformation
of large-scale oil and gas fields in a short time and at low
cost, and can also obtain historical deformation data. In
summary, the aforementioned advantages could potentially relieve the problems faced by traditional oil and gas
exploration monitoring.
InSAR TECHNOLOGY
With the continuous exploitation of oil and gas, the negative impacts are increasingly serious. More countries have
begun to pay attention to this problem, and many researchers have done a large amount of work on monitoring the deformations of oil and gas exploitation. However, for a long
time, the methods for monitoring oil and gas deformation
have not changed much. Although traditional deformation monitoring methods are widely used, they also expose
their shortcomings in the application process, such as high
cost, observation based on discrete points, and vulnerability to weather factors. There was no technology suitable for
conducting regular, extensive deformation monitoring of
oil field mining areas until the emergence of InSAR.
InSAR technology is an active remote sensing measurement using SAR on a satellite. It mainly observes in the
single-track or repeated-track mode; that is, two antennas
simultaneously observe the ground objects, or the ground
objects are observed by two antennas in nearly parallel orbits. In this way, a complex image pair of the same target
object is acquired, and phase information is extracted from
the complex data. Then, the height of the sensor, direction of the wave, radar wavelength, geometric relationship
between the antenna baseline, and other information are
combined to obtain the elevation and deformation phase
information of the ground object. This technology has a
wide monitoring range, covering a few thousand square kilometers in one monitoring, and the repetition period can
be as high as once a day.
InSAR technology was first proposed by Graham in
1974 [13]. It was originally used to draw topographic maps
[14], [15]. In 1978, SAR was first installed on the marine
satellite SEASAT launched by NASA. Since then, SAR has
officially entered the application field. InSAR technology
can detect small deformations on the surface, and the monitoring accuracy can reach the millimeter level. It provides
high-precision, noncontact, surface-based monitoring and
JUNE 2020

IEEE GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING MAGAZINE

S2
S1

B
α
θ
R2

h
FIGURE 2. A geometric diagram of InSAR. S: satellite.

abundant data reserves, which can meet the needs of largescale surface deformation monitoring. Take repeated orbital interferometry as an example; the geometric relationship
between the satellite orbit of the InSAR technology and the
target is shown in Figure 2.
Currently, InSAR technology has great application potential in urban planning and construction [16]-[18], disaster
prevention [19]-[21], mining management [22]-[24], and
so on. In particular, InSAR has been widely used in largescale surface deformation monitoring [25], the main reasons
being the need for surface deformation disaster monitoring
and the requirement of continuous and reliable data sources.
InSAR technology can quantitatively study the degree of surface deformation, making up for the shortcomings of traditional remote sensing technology and measurement methods. Therefore, the most successful application area of InSAR
technology is surface deformation research.
For example, Amelung et al. [26] used InSAR technology to monitor the surface deformation of Las Vegas from
April 1992 to December 1997 and also employed temporal
analysis to detect seasonal subsidence and uplift patterns.
Fruneau and Sarti [27] used InSAR technology to map the
spatial extent of the two sinking areas of Paris and examine the temporal evolution of
GROUND DEFORMATION
the subsidence. Tesauro et al.
MONITORING IS GENERALLY
[28] applied radar interferomAPPLIED TO DIFFERENT OIL
etry to analyze subsidence in
AND GAS AREAS, MAINLY
the Vomero area within the
BASED ON ESTIMATES OF
city of Napoli. Hoffmann et al.
[29] presented InSAR meaTHE REMAINING RESERVES
surements of typically small
AND DISASTER ASSESSMENT.
magnitudes and showed that
these high-resolution measurements offered great potential for future research on aquifer systems. Strozzi et al.
[30] integrated SAR with the leveling and GPS methods
to detect the subsidence around the Lagoon of Venice and
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IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - June 2020

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