Towards traffic monitoring with TerraSAR-X

Abstract

This article presents an overview of the traffic monitoring project initiated in the context of the TerraSAR-X mission and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) transportation research program. A short description of the TerraSAR-X instrument is presented, followed by an analysis of the necessary TerraSAR-X system settings for traffic monitoring and an assessment of the expected image quality. Based on a brief revision of the theory of moving object effects in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images and a quantification of these effects for the TerraSAR-X case, an outline is presented of the processing system that is currently implemented to detect moving vehicles and estimate their velocities. Special emphasis is placed on the integration of a priori information derived from road databases for improving detection rates and velocity estimation accuracy.