The New Tandem-X Change Dem: Specifications And Interferometric Processing

Abstract

Since 2017, the TanDEM-X mission aims to acquire data globally to generate another (updated) DEM. This new set of acquisitions, which will be complete in 2020, has a clear temporal separation from those used for the TanDEM-X global DEM. It will therefore allow the creation of a temporally independent DEM, the so-called “TanDEM-X Change DEM” enabling the characterization of terrain changes. Since only one global coverage is being acquired, improvements in e.g. the interferometric data processing are necessary. In particular, an edited version of the existing global TanDEM-X DEM is now the “starting point” for the interferometric processing as detailed in this paper.