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Ground-Based SAR Interferometry (GB-InSAR) is nowadays a proven technique widely used for slope monitoring in open pit mines and landslide control. Traditional GB-InSAR techniques involve transmitting and receiving antennas moving on a scanner to achieve the desired synthetic aperture. Mechanical movement limits the acquisition speed of the SAR image. There is a need for faster acquisition time as it plays an important role in correcting rapidly varying atmospheric effects. Also, a fast imaging radar can extend the applications to the measurement of vibrations of large structures. Furthermore, the mechanical assembly put constraints on the transportability and weight of the system. To overcome these limitations an electronically switched array would be preferable, which however faces enormous technological and cost difficulties associated to the large number of array elements needed. Imaging Multiple-Input Multiple Output (MIMO) radars can be used as a significant alternative to usual mechanical SAR and full array systems. This paper describes the ground-based X-band MIMO radar SPARX recently developed by IDS GeoRadar in order to overcome the limits of IDS GeoRadar’s well-established ground based interferometric SAR systems. The SPARX array consists of 16 transmit and 16 receive antennas, organized in independent sub-modules and geometrically arranged in order to synthesize an equally spaced virtual array of 256 elements.

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Over the past 10 years slope monitoring radar via the interferometry technique has evolved as an important tool for safety critical monitoring of pit wall movements in surface mining. Whilst radar can provide near real-time high spatial resolution surface displacement movement, the displacement vector measured using interferometry is line-of-site (LOS) to the radar position and does not provide a spatially oriented vector. Using two or more ground-based interferometric synthetic aperture radar (GBInSAR) systems to rapidly record continuous spatially dense LOS displacement data of an open pit slope in 'stereo', has potential to provide detailed vector movement across an entire wall or whole pit. The radar displacement vectors can be combined to create a pseudo three-dimensional (3D) displacement map of the pit slope using millions of monitoring points. Data collected from several radar systems has potential to greatly improve the understanding of the 3D kinematics of a large rock slope and further assist in better mine planning and design thus allowing more efficient mine operations. This paper will cover examples and analysis of pseudo 3D displacement map data from GBInSAR systems.

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