An Efficient Global Scale Sentinel-1 Radar Backscatter and Interferometric Processing System

Abstract

We describe an efficient and cost-effective data access mechanism for Sentinel-1 Terrain Observation with Progressive Scans (TOPS) mode bursts. Our data access mechanism enables burst-based data access and processing, thereby eliminating the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Sentinel-1 Single Look Complex (SLC) data packaging conventions as a bottleneck to large scale processing. The pipeline throughput is now determined by the available computation resources and the efficiency of the analysis algorithms. For targeted infrastructure monitoring studies, we are able to generate coregistered, geocoded stacks of SLCs for any area of interest (AOI) in the world, in a few minutes. In addition, we describe our global scale radar backscatter and interferometric products, and associated pipeline design decisions that ensure geolocation consistency across the suite of derived products from Sentinel-1 data. Finally, we discuss the benefits and limitations of working with geocoded SLC data.