RADARSAT Constellation Mission SLC workflow

Available with Image Analyst license.

A RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM) Single Look Complex (SLC) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image must be processed before it can be used for visualization or analysis.

The Synthetic Aperture Radar toolset, in the Image Analyst toolbox, contains tools to generate calibrated, terrain-corrected, analysis-ready imagery data. The tools listed in the following table are used to generate RCM SLC data that is ready for analysis, as shown in diagram below.

Tool	Description
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.
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.
Remove Thermal Noise	Corrects backscatter disturbances caused by thermal noise in the input synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data, resulting in a more seamless image.
Multilook	Averages the input synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data by looks in range and azimuth to approximate square pixels, mitigates speckle, and reduces SAR tool processing time.
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.

Processing considerations

The noise level metadata is provided with the RCM SLC auxiliary products to allow you to perform noise removal. Since the estimated instrument noise is provided for calibrated data, run the Apply Radiometric Calibration tool before the Remove Thermal Noise tool.

ScanSAR mode is not currently supported. The following non-ScanSAR modes are supported:

• Spotlight
• Very High Resolution 3m
•   High Resolution 5m
•   Medium Resolution 16m
•   Quad-polarization