CryoSat Ground Segment: PDS-IPF infrastructure design overview

CryoSat is the first ESA Earth Explorer Opportunity mission. It is designed to remotely sense the Earth's ice-covered surfaces using a new concept of radar altimeter instrument. It will use synthetic aperture radar and radar interferometry techniques in addition to conventional nadir looking pulse limited technique to provide superior measurements of surface elevation over both the continental ice sheets and sea ice. In the frame of a European tender competition, Advanced Computer Systems SpA has been awarded by ESA in 2001 for the design and development of the Payload Data Segment (PDS) and of the Instrument Processing Facility (IPF) infrastructures for the CryoSat Ground Segment. With more than twenty years of experience in design, developing and delivery of Earth Observation Data processing systems, Advanced Computer Systems SpA (ACS), based in Rome, Italy, is a leading firm in this field. More than one hundred operational systems are today in operation in 25 countries, within and outside Europe, mostly running 24 hours a day, ingesting and processing many of the available EO satellites like Landsat, SPOT, ERS, JERS, SRTM, Radarsat, Envisat. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the developed infrastructure.