On the geolocation accuracy of COSMO-SkyMed products

Accurate geolocation of SAR data is nowadays strongly required because of the increasing number of high resolution SAR sensors available as for instance from TerraSAR-X / TanDEM-X and COSMO-SkyMed space-borne missions. Both stripmap and spotlight acquisition modes provide from metric to sub metric spatial resolution which demands the ability to ensure a geolocation accuracy of the same order of magnitude. Geocoding quality depends on several factors and in particular on the knowledge of the actual values of the satellite position along the orbit, and the delay introduced by the additional path induced by changes in the refractivity index due to the presence of the atmosphere (the so called Atmospheric Path Delay or APD). No definitive results are reported yet in the scientific literature, concerning the best performances achievable by the COSMO-SkyMed constellation in terms of geolocation accuracy. Preliminary studies have shown that sub-pixel geolocation accuracies are hardly achievable with COSMO-SkyMed data. The present work aims at inspecting the origin of the geolocation error sources in COSMO-SkyMed Single-look Complex Slant (SCS) products, and to investigate possible strategies for their compensation or mitigation. Five different test sites have been selected in Italy and Argentina, where up to 30 corner reflectors are installed, pointing towards ascending or descending passes. Experimental results are presented and discussed.