TanDEM-X (TerraSAR-X add-on for digital elevation measurements) is an innovative spaceborne radar interferometer that is based on two TerraSAR-X radar satellites flying in close formation. The primary objective of the TanDEM-X mission is the generation of a consistent global digital elevation model (DEM) with an unprecedented accuracy, which is equaling or surpassing the HRTI-3 specification. Beyond that, TanDEM-X provides a highly reconfigurable platform for the demonstration of new radar imaging techniques and applications. This paper gives a detailed overview of the TanDEM-X mission concept which is based on the systematic combination of several innovative technologies. The key elements are the bistatic data acquisition employing an innovative phase synchronization link, a novel satellite formation flying concept allowing for the collection of bistatic data with short along-track baselines, as well as the use of new interferometric modes for system verification and DEM calibration. The interferometric performance is analyzed in detail, taking into account the peculiarities of the bistatic operation. Based on this analysis, an optimized DEM data acquisition plan is derived which employs the combination of multiple data takes with different baselines. Finally, a collection of instructive examples illustrates the capabilities of TanDEM-X for the development and demonstration of new remote sensing applications.

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TanDEM-X: A Satellite Formation for High-Resolution SAR Interferometry

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/4768668/4784008/04784017.pdf

TanDEM-X: A satellite formation for high-resolution SAR interferometry

Bi- and multistatic synthetic aperture radar (SAR) operates with distinct transmit and receive antennas that are mounted on separate platforms. Such a spatial separation has several operational advantages, which will increase the capability, reliability and flexibility of future SAR missions. Various spaceborne bi- and multistatic SAR configurations are introduced, and their potential for different applications such as frequent monitoring, wide-swath imaging, scene classification, single pass cross-track interferometry and resolution enhancement is compared. Furthermore, some major challenges such as phase and time synchronisation, bi- and multistatic SAR processing, satellite orbit selection and relative position sensing are addressed.

/pdf/spaceborne-bi-and-multistatic-sar-potential-and-challenges-50nwgfz0zv.pdf

Spaceborne bi- and multistatic SAR: potential and challenges

The superposition of contributions from different stable targets within the same pixel is a phenomenon that may impair the imaging and monitoring of ground scatterers via the multipass synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferometry technique. Three-dimensional SAR imaging, also known as SAR tomography, uses multiple views to profile the scattering power at different heights. This technique has been shown to be capable of separating interfering target responses on real data. Differential SAR tomography has been recently proposed as a technique that extends the potentialities of SAR tomography to the target deformation monitoring. It performs a 4-D space-velocity imaging that enables not only separating interfering targets in elevation but also distinguishing their single slow deformation velocities. This work addresses for the first time the application of 4-D SAR imaging to real data to determine the height and mean deformation velocity of single scatterers and double-scattering mechanisms interfering at high resolution in the same pixel. It also discusses the postprocessing steps required to identify the presence of stable single and double scatterers after elevation-velocity focusing. Moreover, it proposes a technique for the extraction of time series from interfering targets to measure possible nonlinear temporal deformations.

Four-Dimensional SAR Imaging for Height Estimation and Monitoring of Single and Double Scatterers

Synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) is a powerful and increasingly expanding technique for measuring the topography of a surface, its changes over both short- and long-time scale, and other changes in the detailed characteristics of the surface. We provide a tutorial description of recent results on multibaseline (MB) InSAR processing. The main focus is on the problem of retrieving both heights and radar reflectivities of natural layover areas by means of a cross-track InSAR (XTI-SAR) system with a uniform linear array (ULA). It is formulated as the problem of detecting and estimating a multicomponent signal corrupted by multiplicative noise - the speckle in the radar imaging jargon - and by additive white Gaussian noise. Application to the InSAR problem of both nonparametric and parametric modern spectral estimation techniques is described. The problem of estimating the number of signal components in the presence of speckle is also addressed. Finally, a brief mention is given to recent research trends on robust methods for nonperfectly calibrated arrays, on processing for non-ULA configurations, and on MB SAR tomography, which is an extension of MB SAR interferometry for the full 3D mapping of semitransparent volume scattering layers. The state of the art of other advanced multichannel interferometric techniques is also briefly recalled.

Multibaseline cross-track SAR interferometry: a signal processing perspective

We propose a technique to provide interferometry by combining multiple images of the same area. This technique differs from the multi-baseline approach in literature as (a) it exploits all the images simultaneously, (b) it performs a spectral shift preprocessing to remove most of the decorrelation, and (c) it exploits distributed targets. The technique is mainly intended for DEM generation at centimetric accuracy, as well as for differential interferometry. The problem is framed in the contest of single-input multiple-output (SIMO) channel estimation via the cross-relations (CR) technique and the resulting algorithm provides significant improvements with respect to conventional approaches based either on independent analysis of single interferograms or multi-baselines phase analysis of single pixels of current literature, for those targets that are correlated in all the images, like for long-term coherent areas, or for acquisitions taken with a short revisit time (as those gathered with future satellite constellations).

/pdf/joint-multi-baseline-sar-interferometry-4nsih4i28d.pdf

A. Pauciullo

Papers

Joint multi-baseline SAR interferometry