First interferometric performance analysis of full polarimetric TanDEM-X acquisitions in the pursuit monostatic phase

TanDEM-X is a spaceborne mission consisting in two satellites that are operated simultaneously for bistatic SAR acquisitions. The flexibility offered by both SAR instruments allows the acquisition of full polarimetric data by activating the experimental dual-receive antenna (DRA) mode. For the first time on the TanDEM-X mission, it is possible to systematically command quad polarization acquisitions. We have estimated the quality of such full polarimetric products by a first interferometric performance analysis. The influence of different instrument parameters on the interferometric performance, such as chirp bandwidth or block adaptive quantization, have been investigated. In this paper first results are presented and recommendations for the optimization of the TanDEM-X quad polarization products are given.