A wavelet-based thermal noise removal approach for Sentinel-1 records on polar areas

The potential of Sentinel-1 recordings, mainly the most extensive spatial coverage and the highest temporal resolution, is not fully exploited in polar areas because of thermal noise. The strong intensity of the noise in low backscattering areas makes it resemble ice, which deteriorates the sea-ice analysis. Moreover, in multi-looking modes, the thermal noise varies across the sub-swaths and introduces large stripes at their intersection. In this paper, we propose a noise removal approach based on wavelets. The experimental analysis conducted on several images shows the aptitude of the proposed method to effectively and efficiently eliminate the noise.