Abstract
Abstract. In synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology, urban mapping and modelling have become possible with revolutionary missions TerraSAR-X (TSX) and Cosmo-SkyMed (CSK) since 2007. These satellites offer 1m spatial resolution in high-resolution spotlight imaging mode and capable for high quality digital surface model (DSM) acquisition for urban areas utilizing interferometric SAR (InSAR) technology. With the advantage of independent generation from seasonal weather conditions, TSX and CSK DSMs are much in demand by scientific users. The performance of SAR DSMs is influenced by the distortions such as layover, foreshortening, shadow and double-bounce depend up on imaging geometry. In this study, the potential of DSMs derived from convenient 1m high-resolution spotlight (HS) InSAR pairs of CSK and TSX is validated by model-to-model absolute and relative accuracy estimations in an urban area. For the verification, an airborne laser scanning (ALS) DSM of the study area was used as the reference model. Results demonstrated that TSX and CSK urban DSMs are compatible in open, built-up and forest land forms with the absolute accuracy of 8–10 m. The relative accuracies based on the coherence of neighbouring pixels are superior to absolute accuracies both for CSK and TSX.
Highlights
As it is well known, active synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensors provide their own illumination and can penetrate clouds by longer wavelength transmitting signals
In the Figure, it can be interpreted that the TSX digital surface model (DSM) is more compatible with reference model derived from airborne laser scanning (ALS) data, produced by Greater Municipality of Istanbul in early 2013 and have 10cm vertical accuracy
This study reports the performance comparison of DSMs generated from revolutionary SAR satellites CSK and TSX’s high-resolution spotlight (HS) imagery on the basis of a reference ALS DSM
Summary
As it is well known, active synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensors provide their own illumination and can penetrate clouds by longer wavelength transmitting signals. They are capable of acquiring data both day and night offering rapid mapping (Dell’Acqua and Gamba 2010, Gan et al 2012). 2007 was a revolution year for SAR imaging technology on spatial resolution side with generation satellites Cosmo-SkyMed (CSK) and TerraSARX (TSX). They provide ≈1 m azimuth resolution in high resolution spotlight (HS) mode. We believe that this study will be a reference for upcoming related works
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