SAR, SARin, RDSAR and FF-SAR Altimetry Processing on Demand over Inland Water for Cryosat-2, Sentinel-3 & Sentinel-6 at ESA’s Altimetry Virtual Lab

This presentation provides an update on the ESA radar altimetry processing services portfolio, known as SARvatore, for the exploitation of CryoSat-2 (CS-2) and Sentinel-3 (S-3) data from L1A (FBR) data products up to SAR/SARin L2 geophysical data products. The following on-line & on-demand services compose the portfolio, now hosted in the ESA Altimetry Virtual Lab at the EarthConsole® (https://earthconsole.eu):

• The ESA-ESRIN SARvatore (SAR Versatile Altimetric Toolkit for Research & Exploitation) for CS-2 and S-3 services. These processor prototypes allow the users to customize the processing at L1b & L2 by setting a list of configurable options, including those not available in the operational processing chains (e.g., SAMOSA+ and ALES+ SAR retrackers).
• The TUDaBo SAR-RDSAR (TU Darmstadt – U Bonn SAR-Reduced SAR) for CS-2 and S-3 service. It allows users to generate reduced SAR, unfocused SAR & LRMC data. Several configurable L1b & L2 processing options and retrackers (BMLE3, SINC2, TALES, SINCS, SINCS OV) are available.
• The TU München ALES+ SAR for CS-2 and S-3 service. It allows users to process L1b data applying the empirical ALES+ SAR subwaveform retracker, including a dedicated SSB solution.
• The Aresys FF-SAR (Fully-Focused SAR) for CS-2 & S-3 service. It provides the capability to produce L1b products with several configurable options and with the possibility of appending the ALES+ FFSAR output to the L1b products. In the future, the service will be extended to process Sentinel-6 data.

The following new services will be made available: the CLS SMAP S-3 FF-SAR processor (s-3-smap, http://doi.org/10.5270/esa-cnes.sentinel-3.smap) and the ESA-ESTEC/isardSAT L1 Sentinel-6 Ground Prototype Processor.                                                     

All output data products are generated in standard netCDF format and are therefore also compatible with the multi-mission “Broadview Radar Altimetry Toolbox” (BRAT, http://www.altimetry.info).

The Altimetry Virtual Lab is a community space for simplified processing services and knowledge-sharing, hosted on the EarthConsole®, a powerful EO data processing platform now on the ESA Network of Resources. This enables SARvatore Services to remain open for worldwide scientific applications, including for R&D studies on the retrieval of radar altimetry measured variables contributing to Inland Water monitoring (write to altimetry.info@esa.int for further information).