earth online

TerraSARSIM

Overview

Temporal change analysis using colour composites
Temporal change analysis using colour composites

What was the purpose of TerraSAR SIM?

TerraSAR was conceived as a radar system designed to provide observation of the Earth's surface at two different radar frequency bands: L-band and X-band. In its present design, the L-band is fully polarimetric while the X-band system offers multi-polarisation capabilities. The current mission design envisages flying two separate radars on separate platforms.

Funded by the ESA TerraSAR-L mission, the 'Dual-Band SAR - TerraSAR SIM' project's major objective was to quantify the impact of time lag between acquisitions at different wavelengths on Land Use Mapping and crop parameter retrieval, to prove if time lag has an important impact when X- and L-band are acquired non-simultaneously from different platforms.

Previous studies have shown that applications such as crop parameter retrieval and land use classification clearly benefit from the availability of multi-wavelength and multi-polarisation SAR data. Current plans for future SAR missions are based on single-frequency SAR systems.

What was the outcome of TerraSAR SIM?

Investigations of the project based primarily on separability analysis showed that:

  • Short term differences between X- and L-band acquisition not significant influence agricultural and land use applications,
  • Processing levels of L-band don't have a significant impact on the results of separability analysis / classification / biomass retrieval,
  • Results improved when multi-frequency data is used with respect to single frequencies

Download the TerraSAR SIM Final Report

Campaign Summary
Data Coverage (Year)2003
Geographic SiteBarrax (Albacete, Castilla-La Mancha, Spain)
Field of applicationAgriculture
Data sizeMore than 50 GB


Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.5270/esa-9uva1r2 - Terra SARSim: " AO4212 2002 / Dualband TerraSAR SIM "

Data

The campaign data is available online via FTPS upon submission of a data access request. An active EO Sign In account is required to submit the request.

The data can be downloaded via an FTP client (e.g., FileZilla or WinSCP) using the option "Implicit FTP over TLS".

For further information about the EO Sign In Service you can visit TellUs

Should you need support please contact EOHelp

Tweet