Overview of the Tasks and Design of the German PAF for X-SAR / SRTM

Kurzfassung

The tasks of the German Processing and Archiving Facility (PAF) for X-SAR / SRTM are as follows: Raw data analysis and quality check of all acquired raw data, support of calibration, long term archiving and cataloging of all raw data and final data products, SAR and InSAR processing, DEM and GTC-image generation, establishment of an order interface, production control and a post processor for generation of user copies. The calibration, validation and screening phase shall be performed within 6 month after the mission and all data processing shall be finished within a timeframe of additional 24 month. The main data products are the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) with 1 arcsec posting and the corresponding geocoded terrain corrected (GTC) SAR images. The raw data volume to be processed is in the order of 4 Tbyte which requires use of high performance parallel computers. In order to run the system round the clock a robot maintained data archiving system will be used for raw data, intermediate data sets as well as final DEM and GTC products. The software system is decomposed into several subsystems which can be tested and operated for its own.