Inter-agency comparison of TanDEM-X baseline solutions Original Research Article

TanDEM-X (TerraSAR-X add-on for Digital Elevation Measurement) is the first Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) mission using close formation flying for bistatic SAR interferometry. The primary goal of the mission is to generate a global digital elevation model (DEM) with 2 m height precision and 10 m ground resolution from the configurable SAR interferometer with space baselines of a few hundred meters. As a key mission requirement for the interferometric SAR processing, the relative position, or baseline vector, of the two satellites must be determined with an accuracy of 1 mm (1D RMS) from GPS measurements collected by the onboard receivers. The operational baseline products for the TanDEM-X mission are routinely generated by the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) and the German Space Operations Center (DLR/GSOC) using different software packages (EPOS/BSW, GHOST) and analysis strategies. For a further independent performance assessment, TanDEM-X baseline solutions are generated at the Astronomical Institute of the University of Bern (AIUB) on a best effort basis using the Bernese Software (BSW). Dual-frequency baseline solutions are compared for a 1-month test period in January 2011. Differences of reduced-dynamic baseline solutions exhibit a representative standard deviation (STD) of 1 mm outside maneuver periods, while biases are below 1 mm in all directions. The achieved baseline determination performance is close to the mission specification, but independent SAR calibration data takes acquired over areas with a well known DEM from previous missions will be required to fully meet the 1 mm 1D RMS target. Besides the operational solutions, single-frequency baseline solutions are tested. They benefit from a more robust ambiguity fixing and show a slightly better agreement of below 1 mm STD, but are potentially affected by errors caused by an incomplete compensation of differential ionospheric path delays.