SAR Polarimetry Workstation

PCI Geomatics (Canada) has development and release of the SAR Polarimetry Workstation (SPW) as part of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) Earth Observation Application Development Program (EOADP). The SPW is available as an add-on module to Geomatica 10, our image-centric geospatial software.

POLarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (POLSAR) data has greater information content than the more commonly available non-polarimetric SAR data, and there is solid experimental evidence that this data can be exploited in a variety of important tasks, including sea-ice detection and classification, agricultural crop monitoring, and forest type and harvest mapping. In addition, POLSAR data can be collected day or night and under atmospheric conditions that prevent the collection of optical data, such as clouds. The availability of POLSAR data, particularly from satellite-borne sensors, will soon increase significantly, and there will be a considerable interest in establishing truly operational applications of this data. The SPW is a tool that will help make this happen.

The SPW can directly read data products from the AIRSAR, ENVISAR ASAR, CV-580, and SIR-C systems. It is also able to read synthetic RADARSAT-2 data products and will be able to read the real data products once they become available.