Design of the DEM Mosaicking and Calibration Processor for TanDEM-X

The primary goal of the TanDEM-X mission is the derivation of a high-precision global Digital Elevation Model (DEM) according to HRTI level 3 accuracy. This paper focuses on the generation of the global DEM from pre-viously processed interferometric “Raw DEMs”. The system involved, the DEM Mosaicking and Calibration Processor (MCP), estimates remaining offsets and tilts by a new region-wide block adjustment for thousands of Raw DEMs. Furthermore, it enables the fusion of the Raw DEMs into a quality-controlled global DEM product that is presented at the end of this paper.