The principles of positioning with space-borne SAR images

The researchers of surveying and mapping have paid much attention to SAR radar because of its capabilities of observing the Earth by all weather and all-time. With the development of science and technology, especially with the improvement of SAR resolution and orbital positioning accuracy, the application of SAR to surveying and mapping field has been broadened. The principles and methods proposed in this paper are aimed to realizing (a) mapping with single SAR image; (b) generating SAR orthophotomap; and (c) mapping with SAR stereo-image provided that orbital parameters are already known in the digital photogrammetric system. Finally the principles have been successfully applied to automatic generation of DEM through image matching by using ERS-1 and RADARSAT1 images to construct image pairs.