Radar imagery provides solutions in measuring the deformations of the Earth surface, either produced by natural phenomena (earthquakes, subsidence), or by extensive mining, deforestation and other human activities.

In providing the needed input data, spaceborne systems are inefficient for a number of situations: the revisit time for a typical spaceborne SAR is in the order of days. Given this fact, when different phenomena are monitored over a specific area at a specific time, the needed images are not always available. In addition, sometimes the point of interest is limited, and high spatial resolution images are required, therefore the images are to be bought, making the provided service not very cost efficient. Therefore, the modern solution to applications that require very fine sampling in the time domain is given by ground-based radar instruments. The immediate advantages of such an architecture are: cost efficiency, high precision of measurements and the possibility to correlate the measurements with spaceborne data.

TERRASIGNA developed its own technology for an X-band Ground-based Synthetic Aperture Radar (GB-SAR) that offers the capability to continuously monitor sites of limited extent (typically of a few kilometers) with high resolution. Typical applications of GB-SARs include monitoring of terrain slopes as early warning systems, land deformation monitoring, snow depth retrieval and detection of structural changes in buildings, dams, and other man-made structures.