RADARSAT-2 ground range workflow

Available with Image Analyst license.

A RADARSAT-2  (RS2) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image must be processed before it can be used for visualization or analysis. Issues to address include calibrating to retrieve a meaningful backscatter value, mitigating speckle, removing radiometric and geometric distortions, and rendering images with a large value range.

The Synthetic Aperture Radar toolset, in the Image Analyst toolbox, contains tools you can use to generate calibrated, terrain-corrected, analysis-ready imagery data from georeferenced RS2 SAR ground range data. The ground range data includes SAR Georeferenced Extra (SGX), SAR Georeferenced Fine (SGF), ScanSAR Narrow Beam (SCN), ScanSAR Wide Beam (SCW), ScanSAR Fine (SCF), and ScanSAR Sample (SCS). The following table and diagram describe and illustrate the tools:

Tool	Description
Apply Radiometric Calibration	Converts the input synthetic aperture radar (SAR) reflectivity into physical units of normalized backscatter by normalizing the reflectivity using a reference plane.
Apply Radiometric Terrain Flattening	Corrects the input synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data for radiometric distortions due to topography.
Despeckle	Corrects the input synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data for speckle, which is a result of coherent illumination that resembles a grainy or salt and pepper effect.
Apply Geometric Terrain Correction	Orthorectifies the input synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data using a range-Doppler backgeocoding algorithm.
Convert SAR Units	Converts the scaling of the input synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data between amplitude and intensity, between linear and decibels (dB), and between complex and intensity.

This geoprocessing model shows the workflow for RADARSAT-2 SGX data, but the same workflow can be used for SGF, SCN, SCW, SCF, and SCS data.