The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission: Processing Scenario and Techniques

Abstract

The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), now being scheduled for January 2000, will perform a global topographic mapping of the earth’s surface by the first space-borne single pass C- and X-band SAR interferometers [4]. DLR will process the X-band data to a unique DEM data set with a height accuracy in the order of 6 m [5]. The generation of a global DEM requires algorithms optimized for both accuracy and throughput. The paper presents the processing scenario and the processing system’s architecture and algorithms.