Design, Process Flow and Implementation of Novasar-1 Scene-Based Data Product Generation at Imgeos

NovaSAR-1 is the latest entrant in the Small Satellite category comprising an S-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) payload and an Automatic Identification System (AIS) payload. It has been designed and developed by SSTL (Surrey Satellite Technology Limited, UK) in collaboration with Airbus and COMDEV. The SAR payload provides medium resolution SAR data ranging from 6m-45m. The AIS instrument operating in VHF is used to collect data simultaneously along with SAR imagery of the same area for ship detection. The data has immense potential for applications like flood monitoring agricultural crop assessment, forest monitoring, land use mapping, disaster management and maritime applications.National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) has been entrusted with the responsibility of Ground segment realization for scheduling, reception, processing and dissemination of NovaSAR data at the Integrated Multi-Mission Ground Segment for Earth Observation Satellites (IMGEOS), to Indian and SAARC users as per the ISRO Pricing policy. NRSC has developed, customized and established the framework of automated workflows for generation of Scene-Based Analysis Ready Data Products (ARD) for NovaSAR. This manuscript describes the NovaSAR process flow in IMGEOS from generation to dissemination of Scene-based ARD products for various SAR imaging modes with a theme-based analysis of the derived Radar backscatter at S-band. The AIS data exploitation with respect to ship detection is also presented. The paper also highlights the primary data quality parameters evaluated on the various imaging modes of NovaSAR.