Synthetic aperture radar data is used in conjunction withaltimeter data (a) to produce a terrain map corrected for platform rollangle. The technique uses two synthetic radar antennas (21, 22) and aranging altimeter (23) placed on an aircraft. The aircraft is moved in a setof substantially parallel flight paths where each flight is directly over thestrip of terrain viewed by the synthetic aperture radar of an adjacent flight.During each flight the at least one antenna repeatedly transmits radarsignals whose return echoes are received by both the first and secondantennas. Conventional synthetic aperture radar processing yields a terrainmap uncorrected for roll angle. The uncorrected terrain map data fromone flight are compared with the altimeter data taken during an adjacentflight. This roll angle measure is then used to correct the height andground range of nearby points in the uncorrected terrain map.
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