Spotlight COSMO-SkyMed DEM generation and validation.

This paper focuses on the generation of Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) with COSMO SkyMed Spotlight data in providing DEMs. In particular, the peculiarity of Spotlight data (affected from Doppler centroid drift) is investigated, and the use of the processing chain included in the Delft Object-oriented Radar Interferometric Software (DORIS [1]). The effects of not correctly handled Doppler drift is shown. The standard interferometric processing, without Doppler drift handling, has been applied to Spotlight image pairs, resulting in interferometric coherence loss in interferograms as we move away from scene center. So, the standard processing chain has been modified to take in account the Doppler centroid drift affecting Spotlight data and very high resolution and accuracy DEMs have been obtained. Some Spotlight image pairs have been processed and the obtained DEMs have been shown and analyzed proving the high details and product accuracy.