An InSAR Phase Unwrapping Framework for Large-scale and Complex Events

TL;DR

This paper introduces a diffusion model-based phase unwrapping framework for large-scale InSAR data, capable of handling complex deformation patterns and phase discontinuities caused by faults, outperforming traditional methods.

Contribution

The work presents a novel diffusion model approach for large-scale InSAR phase unwrapping, addressing limitations of existing learning-based methods in handling complex, real-world deformation scenarios.

Findings

Effectively handles phase discontinuities from faults.

Scales well to large interferograms.

Demonstrates superior performance on synthetic and real data.

Abstract

Phase unwrapping remains a critical and challenging problem in InSAR processing, particularly in scenarios involving complex deformation patterns. In earthquake-related deformation, shallow sources can generate surface-breaking faults and abrupt displacement discontinuities, which severely disrupt phase continuity and often cause conventional unwrapping algorithms to fail. Another limitation of existing learning-based unwrapping methods is their reliance on fixed and relatively small input sizes, while real InSAR interferograms are typically large-scale and spatially heterogeneous. This mismatch restricts the applicability of many neural network approaches to real-world data. In this work, we present a phase unwrapping framework based on a diffusion model, developed to process large-scale interferograms and to address phase discontinuities caused by deformation. By leveraging a diffusion model architecture, the proposed method can recover physically consistent unwrapped phase fields even in the presence of fault-related phase jumps. Experimental results on both synthetic and real datasets demonstrate that the method effectively addresses discontinuities associated with near-surface deformation and scales well to large InSAR images, offering a practical alternative to manual unwrapping in challenging scenarios.