SRTM AND BEYOND: CURRENT SITUATION AND NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN SPACEBORNE INSAR

R. Bamler, M. Eineder, B. Kampes, H. Runge, N. Adam

German Aerospace Center (DLR), Remote Sensing Technology Institute (IMF), Oberpfaffenhofen, D-82234 Wessling, Germany, richard.bamler@dlr.de

KEY WORDS: Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (InSAR), SRTM, TerraSAR ABSTRACT: SAR interferometry (InSAR) has become one of the most powerful tools in radar remote sensing. Generation of digital elevation models, measurement of glacier flows and mapping of earthquakes, volcanoes and subsidence are the most prominent applications of InSAR. For most of these applications continuous acquisition of SAR data from space over many years, like with the ERS-1/2 or Radarsat, is indispensable, and a quality in its own. The unique Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) demonstrated in 2000 the single-pass InSAR technology for global topographic mapping by generating a world-wide DEM of unprecedented resolution and uniform quality. A new generation of SAR satellites will be launched in the next three years: TerraSAR-X, Radarsat-2, SARLupe, COSMO-Skymed and ALOS. They embody a lot of novel features, such as higher resolution, polarimetry, splittable antennas, and spot-light imaging mode. These future SAR satellites systems and their potential are described after a review of the state of the art SAR and InSAR techniques and applications. Traffic monitoring by TerraSAR-X is highlighted as a particular application, where after new ideas for InSAR satellite constructions and configurations are discussed. 1. INTRODUCTION For more than a decade SAR images from space are available on a reliable routine basis for scientific, public, and commercial users, independent of weather and daylight conditions. The most successful SAR workhorses have been ERS-1/2, JERS, Radarsat-1, and, since March 2002, ENVISAT. Although the design of the ERS radars was guided by oceanographic questions, soon after the launch interferometric (InSAR) applications took over. Generation of digital elevation models (DEMs), measurement of glacier flows, and mapping of earthquakes, volcanoes and subsidence are the most prominent fields of interest today. For many of these applications continuous acquisition of SAR data over many years is indispensable and a quality in its own. The unique Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, demonstrated for the first time the single-pass InSAR technology for global topographic mapping from space. During a 10 day flight, the space shuttle imaged the earth between 60 degrees North and South latitude, and a high quality, high resolution DEM could be computed. A new generation of SAR satellites will be launched in the next three years: the German SARLupe and TerraSAR-X, the Canadian Radarsat-2, the Italian COSMO-Skymed and the Japanese ALOS. They embody a lot of novel features, such as higher resolution, polarimetry, splittable antennas, and spotlight imaging mode. The paper gives a brief overview of the status of InSAR techniques and applications. This includes oceanography, DEM generation, subsidence measurements, glacier flow assessment, etc. In a second part the new SAR satellite systems are introduced and their potential for high resolution mapping is illustrated. As a particular application, traffic monitoring by TerraSAR-X is highlighted. Finally, a third part discusses new ideas for InSAR satellite constructions and configurations. 2. INSAR MEASUREMENT PRINCIPLES AND TYPICAL APPLICATIONS In SAR interferometry two or more complex-valued SAR images are combined to derive more information about the imaged objects (compared to using a single image) by exploiting the phase differences between the images. In order to extract this additional information, the images must differ in at least one aspect, e.g., they must be taken from different orbits (across-track interferometry), at different times (along-track interferometry, differential interferometry), or at different wavelengths (k interferometry). For a review on SAR interferometry see, for example, (Bamler et al., 1998). 2.1 Across-Track InSAR The configuration used for DEM generation, the so-called across-track interferometer, is depicted in figure 1. This resembles a stereo arrangement: two SARs fly on (ideally) parallel tracks and view the Earth surface from slightly different directions. The separation of the flight paths is called baseline B, its component perpendicular to the look direction the effective baseline B . Given the sensor locations and two ranges r1 and r2 , every point imaged on the earths surface can be mapped from the images back into space by triangulation. Unlike conventional stereo techniques, where homologous points must be identified and image contrast is required, interferometry uses the phase information of every pixel to measure the parallaxes r = r2 r1 . This is possible because SAR is a coherent imaging system that records the phase of the received wave and preserves it throughout all processing steps. The phase of a pixel in the images 1 and 2 is

1, 2 =

r1, 2 + scat 1, 2 + prop 1, 2 + N 1, 2 ,

(1)

where is the radar wavelength (about 3.1 cm for X-band and 5.6 cm for C-band), scat 1, 2 takes care of a phase shift experienced by the waves when scattered by the object, prop 1, 2 are propagation delays in the atmosphere or the ionosphere, and N 1, 2 represent noise contributions (thermal, quantization, etc.). The interferogram is formed by complex conjugate multiplication of both SAR images yielding the phase difference

= 1 2 .
SAR 1

(2)

SAR 2

r
r2 = r1 + r

r1

where is the look angle of the interferometer. Any phase noise translates to a random height error in the final DEM via equation (4). It is obvious that the interferometer becomes more sensitive to height for smaller and larger B. Larger baselines, however, lead to larger differences in look angles, which cause spatial decorrelation of the image (Gatelli et al., 1994). Hence, there are upper limits for interferometric baselines, which are in the order of a few hundred metres to a few kilometres. The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) used a C- and an X-band single-pass interferometer with an effective baseline of 30 m to map 80% of the earths landmass to an accuracy of DTED-2. A typical example for an X-band SRTM DEM is shown in figure 2. The accuracy of these DEMs has been evaluated in various validation projects. The specification calls for an absolute horizontal accuracy of 20 m (90%), an absolute elevation error of 16 m (90%), and a relative error of 6 m. A typical validation result is shown in figure 3.

z
Figure 1: Across-track InSAR configuration. The flight paths of SAR 1 and SAR 2 are perpendicular to the plane of the drawing. Obviously, across-track interferometry ideally requires two SAR antennas to be operated simultaneously (single-pass interferometry). In this case only one of the SARs (the primary antenna) transmits pulses, while both antennas (primary and secondary) receive the radar echoes. Since the baseline, and hence the difference in look angle between primary and secondary antenna, are usually small, the simultaneous acquisition with single-pass interferometry guarantees that any object on ground is imaged under virtually the same atmospheric condition in both channels, i.e. prop , 1 = prop , 2 . Also the scattering properties are the same: scatt , 1 = scatt , 2 and the range parallax for every pixel is proportional to the phase difference of the corresponding pixels in the two SAR images (neglecting noise for the moment). Equation (2) then simplifies to

Figure 2: SRTM/X-SAR DEM of Santa Ana Volcano, El Salvador.

open landscape 669,466 observations stdev dZmin dZmax = 3,29 m = -121,69 m = +61,87 m

r .

(3) Figure 3: Height error histogram from a comparison of a SRTM/X-SAR DEM and ATKIS DGM5 over open land. Trees and buildings distort the radar height measurements. (Koch et al., 2002).

For this case depends solely on terrain height z; the height sensitivity factor is given by

4 B = , z r1 sin

(4)

2.2 Differential InSAR So far, SRTM remains a unique episode of single-pass InSAR in space. All other SAR satellites are used in the repeat-pass mode, i.e., the two (ore more) images for interferometric processing are acquired at different times. For ERS and ENVISAT the time lag is an integer multiple of 35 days. Only during the tandem phase of ERS-1 and ERS-2 the lag was as short as 1 day. Between the acquisition dates the propagation conditions and the terrain to be imaged are subject to changes. A movement in the line-of-sight direction results in an additional differential phase shift (figure 4) of

diff =

rdiff

(5)

For ERS this means that vertical motions of 3 cm or horizontal cross-track motions of 7.2 cm between the acquisitions give rise to an interferometric phase of a full cycle 2. But we cannot distinguish this motion from the atmospheric variability during the acquisitions, since this leads to a delay, and thus a similar phase shift as actual motion of the terrain. Only when we can average several interferograms or assume the water vapour variability as negligible, we can circumvent this problem. Also, micro-scale changes in the scattering cell (moving leaves and branches, growing vegetation, ploughing, etc.) will lead to interferometric decorrelation and increased phase noise (temporal decorrelation; Zebker et al., 1992). With good temporal correlation, the phase can be measured to an accuracy of a few degrees, i.e., cm- and mm-accuracy is achievable. For motion mapping, the SAR should ideally fly the same orbit, i.e., the interferometer should have a zero baseline. In practice this is not feasible. To resolve the ambiguity of topographic phase and motion induced phase, either an accurate DEM is required to compensate the topographic phase, or several interferograms with different baselines are used. Topography and motion can be separated under the assumption that the motion is constant.

Figure 5: Flow velocity field of the Antarctic Thwaites glacier derived from differential InSAR (Lang et al., 2003). The mapped area is roughly 500 km x 500 km. 2.3 Permanent Scatterer InSAR Differential InSAR over longer time periods is often limited by temporal decorrelation. An agricultural field decorrelates steadily with the evolution of the crop. The correlation is completely destroyed once the field is ploughed. Forests decorrelate even more rapidly. On the other hand many manmade and natural objects prove to stay coherent over years and decades. These so-called permanent scatterers (PS) can be used for the ultimate sensitivity in motion measurement from space (Ferretti et al., 2000; Ferretti et al., 2001). PSs are usually bright points in the image, with a very high signal-to-noise ratio. If several SAR images are available, even the propagation errors due to tropospheric water vapour can be averaged out. In practice 30 100 SAR images of the same areas are used to form an interferometric stack spanning a time period of typically 5 12 years. In this co-registered stack, the PSs are identified and their phase history can be tracked and analysed. Several filtering and adjustment steps are required to remove orbit errors, long-wavelength ionospheric delays and to reduce atmospheric effects and noise. The result is a map of subsidence/inflation rates to an accuracy of less than 1 mm/year. Figure 6 shows a section of a radar image of Berlin. The PSs are marked by coloured dots, the colours represent the subsidence rate. A second example is shown in figure 7. The area around the Olympic stadium in Berlin is subject to ground water regulation activities. This area shows up as red PSs, i.e., the ground level is lifting by about 3 mm/year. 2.4 Atmospheric Signals in InSAR So far we have treated the atmospheric signal delay as a nuisance in InSAR data interpretation. Tropospheric water vapour can be shown to be the most disturbing factor. Due to its turbulent structure it exhibits bi-fractal spatial scale properties (Hanssen, 2001) with correlation lengths of about 1 km. All other atmospheric or ionospheric effects are either small in amplitude or of very large scale, such that the can be compensated for by appropriate orbit adjustment. On the other hand, if the topographic phase and the ground motion are known, InSAR can be used to map water vapour distributions

t = t2

t = t1
R

changing atmospheric conditions

t = t1

rdiff

t = t2

terrain motion or subsidence

Figure 4: Repeat-pass interferometry interferometric phase.

and influences on

The result of a glacier flow field derived from differential InSAR is shown in figure 5. Several ascending and descending orbits of ERS have been combined to cover the area and to obtain the two required projections of the velocity vectors.

with a very high accuracy and at a resolution in the order of 100 m. Such high resolution maps could be of interest among others for mega city meteorology.

the range of m/sec and with rapidly decorrelating surfaces can be mapped by such a system. So far, no dedicated ATI system is in space. During the 1994 missions of SIR-C the C-band radar was operated experimentally in the ATI mode for a few data takes. A more recent opportunity was offered by SRTM. Due to mechanical constraints the secondary antenna mounted on the end of the 60 m long boom had an along-track offset of 7 m which gave a modest sensitivity to fast ocean currents. Figure 8 shows a colour coded velocity field (line-of-sight component only) for tidal currents measured with SRTM.

1991

2000

ca. 2.5 mm/year vertical speed in mm/year: -4 0 +4

Figure 6: Subsidence rate derived by the PS method. The marked point is a subway station and settles at a velocity of 2.5 mm/year compared to its neighbourhood. 63 ERS data sets from 1991 to 2000 have been used. The plot shows the relatively low noise of the measurement. The 2 ambiguities are plotted for easier interpretation.

-0.8 m/s

radial velovity

+ 1.2 m/s

Figure 8: Tidal currents measured by SRTM/X-SAR ATI. Dutch Wadden Sea, 3:16 hours before high tide (Romeiser et al., 2003). 3. CURRENT SPACEBORNE INSAR SYSTEMS The majority of interferometric applications today uses data of ERS-1/2 and Radarsat, both C-band SARs. The only source of L-band data was the late Japanese JERS. In particular, the more than 12 years of continuous operation of the ERS family pushed interferometric applications and enabled new methods like the PS technique. The ERS carries a SAR with fixed look angle of 23 deg., a single polarization and a moderate resolution of 25 m. All images of an area are taken with the same parameters. This results in a highly consistent 12 years data set a treasure for interferometry. The seemingly more modern systems Radarsat and ENVISAT offer a variety of imaging modes, which carries the possibility to jeopardize the consistency of the interferometric data archive. On the other hand, the high resolution mode of Radarsat (10 m) and the wide swath ScanSAR modes of both SARs (up to 500 km swath width) are excellent for several InSAR applications. In particular, the possibility of ScanSAR interferometry to generate 500 km wide DEMs in a single shot, is highly

Figure 7: Ground inflation due to ground water regulation at the Berlin Olympic stadium. PS measurements have been spatially interpolated to allow for a better visual interpretation (green: no subsidence/inflation, red: inflation of 4 mm/year, cross: reference point, assumed to be stable; Kampes et al., 2003). 2.5 Along-Track InSAR (ATI) A special case of interferometry with temporarily separated acquisitions is along-track interferometry (ATI), where two radar antennas follow each other at a short distance on the same orbit and possibly on the same platform. The usual time lag is in the order of milliseconds. Ocean currents with velocities in

attractive. Figure 9 shows a DEM derived from a Radarsat ScanSAR data pair.

different polarization reveals more details of the scattering mechanism, and can help to classify objects. Spatial Resolution The spatial resolution of a SAR system depends on the bandwidth in range direction and on the antenna length in flight direction. The bandwidth of future systems will be increased to up to 300 MHz (TerraSAR-X) corresponding to a ground range resolution of about 1 meter. Due to the SAR principle, higher resolution in azimuth requires longer aperture times. This can be achieved either by using shorter antennas with the drawback of decreased SNR, or by azimuth beam steering - also called spot-light mode - at the cost of azimuth scene length. Modern SAR systems like Cosmo or TerraSAR have antennas with such electronic beam steering capability (Zahn, 2000). Swath Width The swath width of conventional strip-map SAR system is principally limited by the pulse repetition interval minus the pulse length, i.e., higher azimuth resolution leads to smaller swathes. While ERS and ENVISAT offer swaths of 100 km, the swath of the higher resolution TerraSAR-X is only 30 km. Larger swaths can be achieved at the cost of azimuth resolution by operating the radar in bursts and stepping the antenna pointing repeatedly through different elevation angles. This mode is called ScanSAR and is available with, e.g., Radarsat, TerraSAR-X and ENVISAT. Revisit Time Due to the active microwave principle, SAR systems offer generally a high probability to successfully perform a requested observation. However, the time between imaging order and actual satellite observation was often long for ERS with its fixed viewing geometry and 35 orbit repeat cycle. Today's and future systems offer variable look angles and even variable look direction (left or right), and thus reduce the so-called order to access time to a few days. However, identical viewing geometry is required for SAR interferometry forcing the revisit time to the natural orbit repeat cycle: 35 days for ENIVSAT, and 11 days for TerraSAR-X. The COSMO and SARLupe systems will consist of several satellites in order to reduce revisit time down to less than a day. Such a multi-satellite system can, of course, be reconfigured to form an across-track or an along-track interferometer. 4.2 Traffic Monitoring The increasing resolution of future SAR systems moves the focus of interest from regional scale down to man-made objects. As preliminary studies with SRTM data showed, large moving vehicles can be detected and their velocity can be estimated exploiting the along track-interferometry principle and the azimuth displacement effect of scatterers that have a velocity component in range (Breit et al., 2003). TerraSAR-X as well as Radarsat-2 will allow to split the antenna in two halves offset by about 2.4 m in flight direction and use two parallel receive chains in order to form an along track interferometer (Mittermayer et al., 2003). The observation of traffic flows and even single vehicles from space will open new fields of civilian applications. Figure 10 shows moving cars detected in SRTM interferograms. The short along-track offset of primary and secondary antennas, as described in section 2.2, has been exploited. With such a sub-optimum low resolution ATI system of opportunity only vehicles with large radar cross section can

Figure 9: DEM of 350 km extent in cross-track and 110 km in flight direction generated from Radarsat ScanSAR data (Holzner et al., 2002). The resolution is 75 m, the mapped area covers Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. The square hints the size of a full ERS 100 km x 100 km scene. 4. FUTURE SAR SYSTEMS AND APPLICATION Table 1 summarizes the key parameters of some space borne SAR missions relevant for civilian users in the near future. Although much of the success of ERS-1 and ERS-2 is based on tandem interferometry, those missions are planned as single satellites due to cost reasons. From the interferometric point of view, the efforts should be bundled to exploit the inherent synergy. Mission TerraSAR-X Launch 2005 Modes Res. Band

StripMap 1m X ScanSAR SpotLight 2005 + StripMap <1m X SARLupe (5 satellites) SpotLight 2005 + StripMap <1m X COSMO-Skymed (4 satellites) ScanSAR SpotLight 2005 StripMap 3m C Radarsat-2 ScanSAR and others 2004 StripMap 7m L ALOS/PALSAR ScanSAR Table 1: Overview of civil or partially civil SAR sensors to be launched in the near future. SARLupe is a reconnaissance system with partial data availability for civil applications. COSMO-Skymed follows a dual-use concept. 4.1 New Features and Requirements Wavelength and Polarization Generally, different fields of application require different wavelengths. For example, shorter wavelengths are favourable for snow and ice observation, while longer wavelengths are more suited for the estimation of biomass. Because the radar backscatter is influenced by several parameters like surface roughness or material, the combination of different wavelengths enhances the separability of individual variables enormously. This led to the combined X- and L-band concept of the TerraSAR mission (Ritter et al., 1999). Likewise, the use of

be detected. TerraSAR-X will be more sensitive by two orders of magnitude.

been exploited for interferometry up to their technical limits. In the case of SRTM the accuracy was finally limited by the 60 m length and the stability of the physical baseline and also by the system signal-to-noise ratio. Atmospheric water vapour and temporal decorrelation are the major error sources in ERS repeat pass interferometry. For the future, the above limitations could be bypassed, and a new class of accuracy could be achieved with simultaneous observations using larger, or even multiple baselines. Such a system can be composed by a constellation of satellites flying closely together. For example, one conventional transmitting SAR satellite could be augmented by several receive-only satellites the cartwheel concept (Massonet et al. 2000; Krieger et al. 2002). Another solution could be to fly two fully functional SAR satellites separated by a short time lag, just large enough to avoid interference between the transmitters, or to fly the two satellites in a close and cooperative constellation. Both possibilities were proposed for a dedicated topography mission based on a constellation of Radarsat-2 and -3 (Girard et al., 2002). 5.2 Synchronization A SAR system where the receive antennas are spatially separated from the transmit antenna is called a bistatic system. Such a system requires timing synchronization with subwavelength accuracy to allow SAR focussing and interferometric phase evaluation. Possible solutions for the synchronization problem are the use of external timing signals, e.g., from GPS or the exchange of synchronization signals between the receiving satellites (Eineder, 2003). Due to the inherent coupling of time-delay and ranging, both methods of synchronization can additionally provide improved estimates for the baseline. 5.3 Mechanical Solutions For the velocity measurements of ocean currents, surface decorrelation requires temporal baselines as short as several tens of a millisecond corresponding to an along track distance of about hundred meters between the satellites. Larger velocities require even shorter distances due to the ambiguity of the phase measurement. With free-flying satellites using conventional ground based orbit control such short distances can not be realized safely. Small orbit corrections are frequently necessary that can only be performed in time using on-board autonomous orbit control (Gill et al., 2003). This can also be implemented by mounting two antennas separated by an ultra-lightweight mechanical structure on one satellite. Figure 11 shows such a structure with a length of up to 28 meters and a mass of 101 grams per meter. 6. CONCLUSION Interferometric use of spaceborne SARs is far more than DEM generation. Several examples have been given in this paper. Today we are at the threshold to a new SAR age, just taking the step from a few medium resolution systems to a suite of sophisticated metre-resolution SAR satellites to be launched in the next years. Some of them will allow for innovative orbit configurations. These technical potentials will boost the development of novel applications.

Figure 10: Top: Motorway A) (Munich Nuremberg, Germany), arrow: SRTM track. Bottom: SRTM/XSAR image with motorway marked in blue. Three vehicles of large radar cross section are identified and their velocities are derived from the interferometric data. 5. NOVEL INSAR CONCEPTS 5.1 Orbit Configurations Neither ERS nor SIR-C/X-SAR of SRTM was originally designed for interferometry. Nevertheless, both sensors have

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