TanDEM-X (TerraSAR-X add-on for Digital Elevation Measurement) opens a new era in spaceborne radar remote sensing [1]-[3], [9], [12]. Realized in the framework of a public-private partnership between the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and EADS Astrium GmbH, a single-pass SAR interferometer with adjustable baselines in acrossand in along-track directions was formed by adding a second (TDX), almos...

Wideband SAR systems such as TerraSAR-X allow estimation of the absolute interferometric phase without resorting to error prone phase unwrapping. This is achieved through the delta-k technique that exploits frequency diversity within the range bandwidth to simulate a SAR system with a much longer carrier wavelength. This benefits all interferometric applications including DEM generation and lan...

SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) has ability to detect subtle surface movement at the scale of millimeter to centimeter. TerraSAR-X is new radar satellite operated at X-band, multi polarization, and multi beam mode. Compared with C-band or L-band SAR, the X-band system inherently suffers from more temporal decorrelation due to short wavelength (3.1 cm), but is more sensitive to surface deformatio...

TerraSAR-X is a new German radar satellite that shall be launched in April 2006. The expected lifetime is 5 years. It carries a high frequency X-band SAR sensor that can be operated in different modes and polarization. The Spotlight(1.3 m), Stripmap(3.3 m) and ScanSARmodes (14.8 m) provide high resolution SAR images for detailed analysis as well as wide swath data whenever a larger coverage is ...

The wide application of high-resolution SAR data, such as TanDEM-X and TerraSAR-X, has resulted in an increase of the data processing difficulty of interferograms, especially in urban areas with serious layovers caused by high-rise buildings. In this paper, a new method based on frequency estimation is proposed to extract and compensate the building layover phase without considering the buildin...

The retrieval of the bare soil moisture content from TerraSAR-X data is discussed using empirical approaches. Two cases were evaluated: (1) one image at low or high incidence angle, (2) two images, one at low incidence and one at high incidence. This study shows in using three databases collected between 2008 and 2010 over two study sites in France (Orgeval and Villamblain) that TerraSAR-X is a...

TanDEM-X (TerraSAR-X add-on for Digital Elevation Measurement) opens a new era in space borne radar remote sensing. A single-pass SAR-interferometer with adjustable baselines in acrossand in along-track directions is formed by adding a second (TDX), almost identical spacecraft, to TerraSAR-X (TSX) and flying the two satellites in a closely controlled formation. TDX has SAR system parameters whi...

TOPSAR is a recently proposed SAR mode for wide swath acquisition, which is foreseen to be used by the ESA Sentinel-1 SAR sensor in its main interferometric wide swath mode. The Microwaves and Radar Institute of the German Aerospace Center is validating TOPSAR mode in space with TerraSAR-X data within the framework of an ESA commissioned project. Several TOPSAR images have been successfully com...

Spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) measurements of the Earth's surface depend on electromagnetic waves that are subject to atmospheric path delays, in turn affecting geolocation accuracy. The atmosphere influences radar signal propagation by modifying its velocity and direction, effects which can be modeled. We use TerraSAR-X (TSX) data to investigate improvements in the knowledge of the...