In: Wagner W„ Székely, B. (eds.): ISPRS TC VII Symposium - 100 Years ISPRS, Vienna, Austria, July 5-7, 2010, IAPRS, Voi. XXXVIII, Part 7B 
2.2 Data Sets 
In these days, TSX is one of the most modem SAR satellites 
and its data will be evaluated in this study. The satellite has 
been launched on June 15 th 2007 from oldest Russia’s space 
launch facility, Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It is built 
in German; the lifetime will be at least 5 years on the space. The 
mission is a joint project in a public private partnership (PPP) 
between the German Ministry of Education and Science 
(BMBF), the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Astrium 
GmbH. Under DLR contract Astrium constructed and built the 
satellite while DLR is responsible for the development of the 
ground segment, instrument calibration and scientific use of 
satellite at its lifetime (URL 1). 
TSX is one of the most advanced SAR satellites using 
interferometry until this day and offers the highest quality 
spatial data that were not available from space before using high 
frequency X-band SAR sensor which can be operated in 
different imaging and polarization modes. Figure 2 and Table 1 
present the system components of the satellite. 
As it can be seen from Table 1, TSX uses 3 different operation 
modes as Stripmap, Spotlight, and ScanSAR. These modes 
provide high resolution images for detailed analysis as well as 
width swath data whenever a larger coverage is required and 
imaging can be possible in single, dual and quad-polarization. 
Besides, TSX data can be used for interferometry by this way 
the DSM generation is possible. 
Figure 2. System components of TSX 
Launch date, Life 
15 June 2007, at least 5 years 
Launch site 
Baikonur, Kazakhstan (Russia) 
Carrier 
Dnepr-1 
Satellite mass 
1230 kilogram 
Satellite size 
5 m height x 2,4 m diameter 
Orbit 
characteristics 
514 km altitute, 11 days repetition, 
97.44° inclination 
Antenna 
4.8 m active array, multi-pol, 
steerable in elevation and azimuth 
Radar frequency 
9.65 GHz 
Power consumption 
800 W in average 
Data reception, 
Mission operation 
DLR, Neustrelitz, 
Oberpfaffenhofen, Weilheim 
Bandwidth 
150 MHz (300 MHz experimental) 
Memory 
256 Gbit (end of life) 
Downlink 
300 Mbit/s 
Imaging modes 
Stripmap (3m), Spotlight (l-2m), 
and ScanSAR (16m) 
Table 1. System components of TSX (URL 1) 
TSX is capable to operate two types of Spotlight modes. The 
first type purely named as Spotlight mode the scenes of interest 
area can be obtained for an area of lOkmxlOkm (length and 
width) and recorded with 2m resolution. At the second type, the 
lengths of the scenes are shorter by 5kmxl0km but offer higher 
resolution. This type is named as high resolution Spotlight 
mode and the scenes have lm azimuth resolution. Between 
these two types of Spotlight mode just the geometric azimuth 
resolution is different in order to increase the azimuth scene 
coverage of Spotlight mode. During the observation of a 
particular ground scene the radar beam is steered like a spotlight 
so that the area of interest is illuminated longer and hence the 
synthetic aperture becomes larger. The Maximum azimuth 
steering angle range is ±0.75° (Roth, 2003). 
At the investigation, for the generation of a DSM, two HRS 
mode TSX SAR images were used which have lm resolution 
and five months time interval. Figure 2 shows these images and 
the following Table 2 presents the characteristics of them. 
Figure 3. HRS TSX SAR images 
Characteristics 
HRS TSX Image 1 
HRS TSX Image 2 
Sensor Id 
SAR 
SAR 
Sensor mode 
High resolution 
Spotlight 
High resolution 
Spotlight 
Start date 
2008-05- 
05T15:57:33,98 
2008-10- 
06T15:57:42,52 
End date 
2008-05- 
05T15:57:34,73 
2008-10- 
06T15:57:43,26 
Polarization 
mode 
Single polarization 
Single polarization 
Polarization 
channel 
HH 
HH 
Looking 
direction 
Right looking 
Right looking 
Pass direction 
Ascending pass 
Ascending pass 
Centre 
incidence angle 
40.9752891207 
41.0898290780 
Length and 
width of scene 
5kmxl0km 
5kmxl0km 
Table 2. Characteristics of high resolution TSX SL images 
For the generation of TSX DSM, interferometric processing 
steps of SARScape module of program ENVI Version 4.6 have 
been used. Interferometric processing steps of DSM generation 
are not as simple as DSM generation with optical imagery. The 
operator has to apply several complex steps and assign 
threshold application values depending up on quality and 
characteristics of the SAR images which are used for DSM 
generation (e.g. co-registration settings, best choice of azimuth 
and range looks etc.). At the interferometric processing, after 
the registration of images, baseline estimation, interferogram 
generation along with co-registered single look complex (SLC) 
505