Proceedings Article | 12 January 2004
Proc. SPIE. 5236, SAR Image Analysis, Modeling, and Techniques VI
KEYWORDS: Agriculture, Satellites, Synthetic aperture radar, L band, Ocean optics, Geology, X band, Data acquisition, Cartography, Floods
The TerraSAR X and L-band satellites have been specified from the earliest requirements to work as a pair, delivering quasisimultaneous
data, designed to meet commercial and institutional needs for geo-information.
Early work was concentrated on the generation of products to meet commercial needs, for applications such as commercial
agriculture management, utilities and risk assessment. Since the advent of the GMES initiative, it has been possible to envisage a sustainable EO system providing for European institutional needs, as well as delivering commercial revenues.
This paper will focus on the results of current work, particularly addressing the specification of joint X- and L-band derived
geo-information products. It is very likely that the X-band satellite will become operational some years before its L-band partner, however. Therefore, the development of pre-cursor products and services, using supplementary EO data is important. C-band SAR imagery, from Envisat and Radarsat, along with L-band ALOS data and optical imagery is most likely to be used in the derivation of these products. It is also likely that, airborne data will have a role to play during this development period.
The paper will also illustrate the high-level architecture of the TerraSAR Exploration Service Infrastructure, outlining the end-to-end TerraSAR delivery chain.
