Global Scale Sentinel-1 Processing System
We (Descartes Labs) describe an efficient and cost effective data access mechanism for Sentinel-1 TOPS mode bursts. Our data access mechanism enables burst-based data access and processing, thereby eliminating ESA’s Sentinel-1 SLC data packaging conventions as a bottleneck to large scale processing. Pipeline throughput is now determined by available compute resources and efficiency of the analysis algorithms. For targeted infrastructure monitoring studies, we are able to generate coregistered, geocoded stacks of SLCs for any 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 SAR SLC data.
The pre-print can be found here.