Airborne X- and Ku-band single-pass DSM generation by means of metasensing radar

The present paper presents the results obtained at MetaSensing BV concerning the generation of Digital Surface Model (DSM). For the study, a novel radar system has been used which can simultaneously operate at X- and Ku-Band. The radar has been mounted on board a Cessna 208 Gran Caravan in left side looking configuration. In order to compensate the nonlinear aircraft motion deviation, the focusing procedure has been performed in time domain. Moreover, residual motion errors caused by the limited navigation system precision have been corrected by means of a sub-aperture approach. In particular, the high coherent single-pass data have allowed a very rapid error estimation convergence within few iterations. Results have been obtained on data acquired near the airport of Teuge in The Netherlands during October 2013 in the framework of a project for flood plain monitoring. The generated DSM have been compared with Lidar DSM, proving the reachable performance of the overall procedure.