IBIS: an innovative technology for monitoring displacements and movements of slopes and structures:

IDS is pioneering a revolutionary technology in the domain of geodetic measurements.
This new technology, based on Radar Interferometry  allows the remote monitoring of movements of large portions of territory (landslides, slopes, volcanoes, glaciers etc.) and of structures (dams, bridges, towers, buildings etc.) with sub-millimetre accuracy.

IBIS technology revolutionizes the traditional approach to measuring the movements and deformations of territories and structures, both in static (slow displacements) and dynamic vibration measurements). Its innovative features include:

• Remote monitoring: capable of monitoring displacements without any access needed to the scenario investigated and at a distance of up to 4 Km
• Wide area monitoring: up to several square km can be monitored at once: while other sensors measure the displacement of one selected point at a time, IBIS measures the simultaneous displacement of the entire scenario in real time
• High accuracy: sub-millimetre measurement accuracy: 1/10 mm in normal situations; up to 1/100 mm in particular conditions
• Any time, all-weather operation: capable of operating in all conditions: day, night, fog and rain.
• Autonomous operation: the system can operate permanent or long running monitoring without human intervention. Real- time feed back on displacement allows its use as an early-warning device.
• Dynamic measurement: IBIS not only allows continuous monitoring of slow displacements and deformations but can also measure structure vibrations (resonance frequencies, vibrational modes) up to 100 Hz.

IDS produces two IBIS configuration:

IBIS-L : for the 2D displacement monitoring of landslides, slopes, large structures.

IBIS-S: for the 1D displacement monitoring of static and dynamic deformations and movements of structures.

 The radar Interferometry technique

Microwave interferometry is a new technology for remote static and dynamic monitoring of structures and/ or soil displacements, and is the fruit of a long term research activity performed in collaboration by IDS and University of Florence. The particular characteristic of this new instrument are that it can operate remotely, with no contact required whatsoever with the target to be monitored and that it can supply practically continuous deformation maps (not just punctual information as provided by current contact sensors), all with an unprecedented measurement speed and accuracy compared to current technology.
The radar beam of the apparatus illuminates the entire scenario to be investigated; the radar receiver then measures the signal reflected. The high resolution capacity over distance provided by the radar produces a displacement map showing the displacement of many points across the entire target; in fact, the radar samples the target about every 0.5 metres. In principle this is as if a vast number of sensors was applied to the target, one every 50 centimetres (virtual sensors).
In reality, the radar samples the target displacements, "detecting" even very small " non-homogeneities", which are normally present in large numbers. If the objective is to sample the displacement of predefined points, passive radar reflectors can be applied to the points of interest:
Thanks to the microwave technology used, the radar can detect displacements of each point on the target up to an oscillation frequency of 50 Hz. with a detection limit of less than 1/10 mm.
This great sensitivity in detecting displacements is due to the use of interferometry, measuring the phase differences of the radar waves reflected from each point. Each sub-millimetric displacement gives rise to a phase difference of the reflected wave, detectable by the radar.