J Lo (2015-2018)

Funding Body: German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi)
Duration: 2015 to 2018
Budget: 247.000 Euro
Role: Co-author of proposal and project manager

The “J Lo” project made use of the special configurations of the TanDEM-X Science Phase for precise 3D point localization and coastline detection. A joint feature of the investigated applications was the exploitation of large spatial and temporal baselines, which were available in Pursuit Monostatic Mode during the Science Phase. In this phase also the relatively new, high resolution Staring Spotlight Mode was available for the first time in a single-pass interferometric configuration. In particular, the following methods and prototypes were developed and investigated:

• PSI and TomoSAR with small data stacks
• Generation of 3D ground control points
• New coherence estimation methods for coastline detection

Besides being the project manager, I was actively contributing to the third work package on coastline detection:
With the large temporal baselines as provided by the Pursuit Monostatic Phase water surfaces decorrelate significantly, whereas land surfaces still stay coherent. Therefore, such interferograms are better suited for the distinction of water and land than conventional TanDEM-X data. We developed non-local filters and fully automatic algorithms for coastline detection.

Selected Publications:

• Schmitt M, Baier G, Zhu XX (2019) Potential of nonlocally filtered pursuit monostatic TanDEM-X data for coastline detection. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 148: 130-141