Emulation of TOPSAR Mode Data for its Interferometric Capabilities Analysis

TOPSAR (Terrain Observation with Progressive Scan) is as new wide swath acquisition mode which is planned to be used by the forthcoming ESA SAR sensor Sentinel-1 [1]. This system allows achieving similar swath coverage than the ScanSAR mode but with an improved azimuth resolution by rotating the antenna from backward to forward at a constant speed Moreover it overcomes two of the main drawbacks of ScanSAR images, amplitude scalloping and the azimuth varying ambiguities. The main objective of the study presented is the analysis and understanding of the characteristics of the TOPSAR new wide swath acquisition mode. Special emphasis has also been brought on the evaluation of its interferometric performance. The following paper reports the results of those analyses.