A New Metadata Standard for Single-Look Complex SAR Data

While there are many existing international standards for SAR, including those from CEOS, ISO, and the various data providers, they do not provide all the metadata that is needed for dealing with all of the existing and upcoming SAR missions. An existing standard, SICD, from the US NGA, while not an international standard, does provide a complete set of metadata that is sufficient for modern SAR systems. A working group in the IEEE Standards Organization has therefore worked to convert this standard into an IEEE standard, with some modifications based on using the SICD standard, and other modifications to better deal with recent changes to SAR instruments. This group consists of experts who wrote the original SICD standard, and others, all of whom are experts in SAR systems and data. The standard is aimed at metadata only, not implementation and formatting issues, in order to provide flexibility to the community for implementation using modern formats. Also, the standard is currently formulated to be applicable to Single-Look, Single-Burst, Complex SAR data only. Other versions are envisioned in the future for raw, multi-burst, and processed data of various kinds. This paper reviews the current state of SAR standards, and summarizes the major changes that are being considered for this new international standard.