Coherent stacking with TerraSAR-X imagery in urban areas

Abstract

The German radar satellite TerraSAR-X was launched in June 2007. It is one of the first satellites to continuously provide space-borne high resolution radar imagery with a slant range resolution in the order of 0.6 m × 1.1 m for civil applications. The sensor, the mission design, the orbit concept, and the SAR processor (TMSP) perfectly support interferometric applications. Naturally, DLR's operational interferometric system GENESIS has been adapted to exploit the innovative high resolution data. Algorithm updates have been proven indispensable due to the more complicated spectral characteristic of the data introduced by the spotlight acquisition mode. Also, the high spatial resolution requires that radargrammetric effects, i.e. local parallaxes, be considered in interferometric processing.