Traffic monitoring with TerraSAR-X

Abstract

In order to enable SAR Along Track Interferometry with a single satellite and without any extension like a mast the TerraSAR-X (TS-X) antenna can be split in two halves in along track direction. In order not to loose power, the overall antenna is used for transmission. On receive the two antenna halfs are linked to two separate receiver channels. Actually for this upgrade, which has been introduced relatively late into the design of the satellite, no additional hardware was necessary. The second receiver channel was already excisting as redundancy. Figure 6 depicts the concept and in Mittermayer, 2003 more applications of the dural receiver mode are described. The overall TS-X antenna is nearly 5m long, which leads an along track distance between the two phase centres of app. 2.5m. Due to the bi-static operation the effective along track baseline again halfs. However, the sensitivity of this relatively short ATI baseline is well suited for the measurement of fast moving targets like cars.