Copernicus collaborative ground segment to support maritime situational awareness

Copernicus (former GMES, Global Monitoring of Environment and Security) is the European Earth Observation Program, conducted jointly by the European Commission, the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) and the member states. In the context of the Copernicus Collaborative Ground Segment initiative, DLR's German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) currently extends the ground station Neustrelitz to support the Sentinel-1 mission as external Local Ground Station (LGS) in addition to the Core Payload Data Ground Segment. This article describes the DLR LGS to be developed and operated and gives an overview of the collaborative ground segment services to be established by DLR's Maritime Safety and Security Lab in Neustrelitz. The activity aims to the fulfilment of all mission requirements, primarily to support the need for near real time performance up to 10 minutes, as those in maritime situational awareness. The development and implementation cover the task of Level 0 processing, based on DLR's Front End Processor (FEP), the implementation of the framework for real time processing up to level 2 (value adding), as well as the development of a hardware-independent virtual processing platform (VM-Ware)

The TerraSAR-X Payload Ground Segment: Pre-Launch Status and Performance

TerraSAR-X, the first national German radar satellite, is scheduled for launch in 2006. It carries an X-band high resolution synthetic aperture radar instrument featuring imaging modes like StripMap, ScanSAR and, particularly, SpotLight in a variety of different polarization modes. Thus the TerraSAR-X mission will provide both the scientific and commercial user community with a variety of products from advanced SAR modes. The TerraSAR-X space segment was built by EADS Astrium GmbH, the ground segment by DLR.\ud One central ground element is the payload ground segment (PGS) which is responsible for the reception of the SAR payload data, their archiving and processing and the distribution of the generated SAR basic products to users. It is currently in its final pre-launch integration and test phase. To test the operational SAR data processing chain under most realistic TerraSAR-X conditions, specific SAR proving grounds have been set up. These are supplemented by a number of test data generation tools and - most important - by a considerable amount of test data generated using the satellite SAR instrument itself and made available for ground segment testing. Thus, an extensive PGS SAR test bed is currently in place and used for both functional and performance end-to-end tests. This paper depicts the various PGS elements for SAR data reception, transcription and processing and summarizes their functionality and design in terms of hard- and software. Both the PGS SAR test bed and the performed end-to-end tests are described. Selected test results which characterize the PGS pre-launch performance are reported

TerraSAR-X SAR Payload Data Processing: Results from Commissioning and Early Operational Phase

TerraSAR-X, the first national German radar satellite, was launched in June 2007. It carries an X-band highresolution synthetic aperture radar instrument featuring the operational imaging modes Stripmap, ScanSAR and, particularly, Spotlight in a variety of different polarization modes. The TerraSAR-X mission completed its commissioning phase in December 2007 and started the provision of high-resolution products from advanced SAR modes for both the scientific and commercial user community from January 2008 on. The payload ground segment (PGS) is responsible for the reception of the SAR payload data, their archiving and processing and the distribution of the generated SAR basic products to users. From the first mission day on, PGS was operated successfully using both its request workflow starting with the input of user orders and ending with the delivery of the generated product and its operational SAR data workflow for the reception and processing of the SAR payload data. The central part of PGS is the TerraSAR Multi-Mode SAR Processor (TMSP) focusing the SAR data in a unified way for the different imaging configurations. A wide range of processing options spanning from phase preserving complex products in slant range geometry to orthorectified terrain corrected intensity images lead to a comprehensive collection of SAR product types and variants. Together with instrument calibration, checkout and tuning of the SAR processor was one of the major tasks of the commissioning phase with respect to product verification and validation. This paper summarizes the key activities and exposes the achievements obtained with respect to focusing quality

Evolution of DLR's Multi-Mission Ground Station as a Reception Facility in the Middle of Europe (Sektion 2)

The Earth Observation Center (EOC) is a cluster institute of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The EOC comprises the German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) and the Remote Sensing Technology Institute (IMF), at work in Oberpfaffenhofen, Neustrelitz, Berlin-Adlershof and Bremen. With its national and international receiving stations, DFD offers direct access to data from earth observation missions, derives information products from the raw data, disseminates these products to users, and safeguards all data in the National Remote Sensing Data Library for long-term use. The EOC operates the National Ground Station Neustrelitz (NSG), which is used as main ground station for the payload data reception of high rate data stream (X-Band, Ka-Band). In the beginning of the 90th, after finishing the INTERKOSMOS program, the station development has started into a new era. First projects have been OKEAN, the solar mission CORONAS-I/F, and the joint project MOMS/PRIRODA. Nowadays, the ground station is involved operationally for remote sensing missions like TerraSAR-X, TanDEM-X, Landsat-8, Landsat-7, KOMPSAT, Sentinel-1A/B, OCEANSAT-2, AQUA, TERRA, and for several small explorer missions. A number of Indian and international projects have been successfully supported. On behalf of ESA, the EOC, especially NGS with specific front end processing systems, has developed and operates the Sentinel-5P Ground System inclusive the operations of ground station elements at Svalbard and Inuvik. The paper describes the evolution process over two decades with respect to the station site and infrastructure, and the main hardware and software design. It focuses on the automation system of the station, which is either today station specific. From the beginning, the development goal was full integration in a highly automated multi-mission system. Relevant working areas are reception planning, reception automation, and quality control. Starting from long-term experience in data reception a software system supporting operations planner and operators has been developed. This system realizes a fast and reliable adopting of changing operation scenarios, a stable station monitoring and control and an objective collection of reception quality data. Furthermore, the paper gives a detailed view on the main integration and production component: the Front-End Processing system (FEP). In this role, the FEP is capable to be easily integrated in local and external facilities and provides a rich bundle of functions beside an excellent expandability and maintainability having limited resources

Integrated Real-Time Processing of X-band Telemetry

This paper addresses the payload data acquisition ground station design which is planned for the EnMAP Payload Ground Segment. A new concept has been proofed to integrate new highly integrated data receiver with a configurable telemetry processing system, called Front End Processor (FEP). The FEP is described more in detail with respect to design, performance, and integration into a multi-mission ground station. An design approach is presented which bases on a high performance buffer (flash memory). The concept has been investigated for data rates up to 320 Mbit/s

Ground Station Control Software

The German Aerospace Center operates a ground station for remote sensing satellites and for small scientific satellites at Neustrelitz. This site allows the receiving of real-time data from all over Europe. Actually the ground station serves satellites from ESA, NASA, India, and Germany. The DFD engineers develop a set of software components, which integrates the multi-mission subsystems and specific equipment from the supplier of each customer. The paper describes the functionality and the design of the ground station control system. The overview over the utilized ground station equipment gives an impression over the complexity of today's ground stations. The software system covers the common required ground procedures like planning, monitoring&control, as well as technical and operational reporting. Furthermore the integrated system supports modern standard to interact with mission control centers, user entities and processing systems for higher level earth observation products

Sentinel-1 near real-time application for maritime situational awareness

In the context of the project real-time services for maritime security (Echtzeitdienste für die Maritime Sicherheit—security), an experimental research platform for validation of maritime products derived from remote sensing data, was developed. This article describes the work carried out to derive ship-, wind-, and wave detection products out of Sentinel-1 remote-sensing data by DLR’s Maritime Safety and Security Lab in Neustrelitz, part of the German Remote Data Center DFD. The activity aims to the fulfilment of project requirements, primarily to support the need for near real-time performance up to 15 min, as those in maritime situational awareness. The development and implementation cover the task of level 0 processing, based on DLR’s front end processor, the implementation of the framework for real-time processing up to level 2 (value adding), as well as the development of a hardware-independent virtual-processing platform