Improved TerraSAR-X Radargrammetry Results

As reported before, the remote sensing group at the University of Miami (UMiami), in collaboration with Industry Partner Airbus Defence and Space, acquired a set of TerraSAR-X images of the Hurricane Michael test area in August and September 2021. First radargrammetry products based on these images were obtained in December 2021, but they looked noisy.

For today's PI meeting, the UMiami group prepared a status report on new achievements in the improvement of the products. During spring 2022, the data processing team at Airbus experimented with an alternative radargrammetry algorithm based on the SAR images and a known input topography from an independent source, but this did not result in better products than the original algorithm. However, a further analysis of the original radargrammetry products from December 2021 at UMiami showed that the agreement with NOAA's lidar-based Continuously Updated Digital Elevation Model (CUDEM) can be significantly improved by fitting a simple second-order polynomial to the relationship between reference heights and radargrammetry heights and applying it to the radargrammetry heights as correction function. The UMiami group will continue to refine this approach in the coming weeks. Furthermore, SAR interferometry-based WorldDEM-Neo data have been ordered from Airbus to have another reference dataset and see how the radargrammetry-, interferometry-, and lidar-based elevation data compare to each other.