DTED (or Digital Terrain Elevation Data) is a standard of digital datasets which consists of a matrix of terrain elevation values, i.e., a

Digital Elevation Model A digital elevation model (DEM) or digital surface model (DSM) is a 3D computer graphics representation of elevation data to represent terrain or overlaying objects, commonly of a planet, moon, or asteroid. A "global DEM" refers to a discrete g ...

. This standard was originally developed in the 1970s to support

aircraft An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engine ...

radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, we ...

simulation and prediction. Terrain elevations are described as the height above the Earth Gravitational Model 1996 (EGM96)

geoid The geoid () is the shape that the ocean surface would take under the influence of the gravity of Earth, including gravitational attraction and Earth's rotation, if other influences such as winds and tides were absent. This surface is extended ...

, not the

WGS84 The World Geodetic System (WGS) is a standard used in cartography, geodesy, and satellite navigation including GPS. The current version, WGS 84, defines an Earth-centered, Earth-fixed coordinate system and a geodetic datum, and also describ ...

reference ellipsoid. DTED supports many applications, including line-of-sight analyses, terrain profiling, 3-D terrain

visualization Visualization or visualisation may refer to: * Visualization (graphics), the physical or imagining creation of images, diagrams, or animations to communicate a message * Data visualization, the graphic representation of data * Information visuali ...

, mission planning/rehearsal, and

modeling A model is an informative representation of an object, person or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin ''modulus'', a measure. Models c ...

and

simulation A simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. Simulations require the use of models; the model represents the key characteristics or behaviors of the selected system or process, whereas the s ...

. DTED is a standard

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is a combat support agency within the United States Department of Defense whose primary mission is collecting, analyzing, and distributing geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) in support of natio ...

(NGA) product that provides medium resolution, quantitative data in a digital format for military system applications that require terrain elevation. The DTED format for level 0, 1 and 2 is described in ''U.S. Military Specification Digital Terrain Elevation Data (DTED) MIL-PRF-89020B'', and amongst other parameters describes the resolution for each level: * Level 0 has a post spacing of approximately 900 meters. * Level 1 has a post spacing of approximately 90 meters. * Level 2 has a post spacing of approximately 30 meters. The precise spacing is defined by dividing the world into zones based on latitude, and is given in the following table: In addition three more levels (3, 4 and 5) at increasing resolution have been proposed, but not yet standardized. DTED data is stored in a

big endian In computing, endianness, also known as byte sex, is the order or sequence of bytes of a word of digital data in computer memory. Endianness is primarily expressed as big-endian (BE) or little-endian (LE). A big-endian system stores the most sig ...

format where negative numbers are signed magnitude.

References

{{Reflist

External links

FAS:_Digital_Terrain_Elevation_Data_[DTED
/nowiki>.html" ;"title="TED">FAS: Digital Terrain Elevation Data [DTED
/nowiki>">TED">FAS: Digital Terrain Elevation Data [DTED
/nowiki>br>DTED at National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency websiteDTED specification
*MATLAB has in its Mapping toolbox a function for reading DTED files
source code
Radar Cartography GIS file formats