Quantitative exploitation of RADARSAT CDPF products for land applications: geometric and radiometric considerations

RADARSAT images produced by the Canadian Data Processing Facility assume that the Earth is, in general, elliptical but the locally spherical approximation can easily be made. This can have significant impact on the determination of location error from the images and on the correction for antenna pattern that is performed in the processing. Selected examples show that even at terrain altitudes of 2000 m these can be significant leading to radiometric errors of many dB and location errors of several km.