An airborne interferometric SAR system for high-performance 3D mapping

Martin Lange; Paul Gill

doi:10.1117/12.818467

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29 April 2009 An airborne interferometric SAR system for high-performance 3D mapping

Martin Lange; Paul Gill

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Proceedings Volume 7308, Radar Sensor Technology XIII; 730806 (2009) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.818467
Event: SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing, 2009, Orlando, Florida, United States

Abstract

With a vertical accuracy better than 1 m and collection rates up to 7000 km²/h, airborne interferometric synthetic aperture radars (InSAR) bridge the gap between space borne radar sensors and airborne optical LIDARs. This paper presents the latest generation of X-band InSAR sensors, developed by Intermap Technologies^TM, which are operated on our four aircrafts. The sensors collect data for the NEXTMap^(R) program - a digital elevation model (DEM) with 1 m vertical accuracy for the contiguous U.S., Hawaii, and most of Western Europe. For a successful operation, challenges like reduction of multipath reflections, very high interferometric phase stability, and a precise system calibration had to be mastered. Recent advances in sensor design, comprehensive system automation and diagnostics have increased the sensor reliability to a level where no radar operator is required onboard. Advanced flight planning significantly improved aircraft utilization and acquisition throughput, while reducing operational costs. Highly efficient data acquisition with straight flight lines up to 1200 km is daily routine meanwhile. The collected data pass though our automated processing cluster and finally are edited to our terrain model products. Extensive and rigorous quality control at every step of the workflow are key to maintain stable vertical accuracies of 1 m and horizontal accuracies of 2 m for our 3D maps. The combination of technical and operational advances presented in this paper enabled Intermap to survey two continents, producing 11 million km² of uniform and accurate 3D terrain data.

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Martin Lange and Paul Gill "An airborne interferometric SAR system for high-performance 3D mapping", Proc. SPIE 7308, Radar Sensor Technology XIII, 730806 (29 April 2009); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.818467

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