What’s New in ENVI SARscape and ENVI SARscape Analytics - Version 5.6

The ENVI SARscape and ENVI SARscape Analytics 5.6 release adds new features and general improvements as well as new data format support.

New Data Import support

(preliminary support)*

COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation*is an X-band SAR constellation. From the first constellation of 4 sensors, supported products include SCS Single Look Complex, DGM Multi-look Ground Range, and GEC Ellipsoidal Geocoded.

Image Courtesy of ASI

Capella Space* is an X-band SAR constellation of very high-resolution sensors. Supported products include GEO Geocoded and Terrain Corrected using a Digital Elevation Model, and SLC Single Look Complex (only for image geometry type slant-plane).

Image courtesy of Capella Space

RADARSAT Constellation Mission - C-Band* supported products include SLC Single Look Complex, and GRD Ground Range Projected.
SICD Polar Format Algorithm (PFA)* is an alternative to the traditional standard algorithms that use the slant range - azimuth geometry to annotate the focused data.
Sentinel-2 Download provides query and download of Sentinel-2 data from the ESA SciHub. Sentinel MultiDownload provides query and download of Sentinel data using the Alaska SAR Facility and ESA scientific hub.
Sentinel MultiDownload provides query and download of Sentinel data using the Alaska SAR Facility and ESA scientific hub.

Drag and Drop UI

Dialogs now allow the use of drag and drop from a variety of sources.

SARscape Basic Layover and Shadow Mask provides feasibility analysis of SAR applications in relation to possible geometric distortions and target visibility. It allows you to check whether a specific type of SAR analysis can be carried out in a certain area. It helps identify when it is more appropriate to use different data with a different illumination angle, in order to carry out that analysis.

Coherence Generation Non-Local Phase Filtering provides good performance in medium and ultra-high resolution data coherence. It preserves point targets and strongly smooths the homogeneous areas.

Interferometric Stacking Continuous Tomography allows 3D SAR radiometric and geometry reconstruction. It is a ready-to-use tool that supports future satellite missions, like BIOMASS ESA, for forestry analysis. Best results are obtained from L-band and P-band.

The Tomographic Slice is simply an image at a given height inside the 3D tomographic SAR image cube. The precise height of scene features can be measured exactly looking at the actual intensity values of a given pixel at different heights. Here we can see an example of the tomographic slice with nine slices. The height is residual with respect to the SRTM DEM used for tomographic processing. The changes in brightness that we see in this series, correspond to the fact that some features of the scene actually have a different height from that provided by the SRTM DEM.

Polarimetry and PolInSAR

Dual Polarimetric Entropy Alpha Anisotropy Decomposition – The following example shows an eigen-decomposition of the coherency matrix of a dual-polarimetric (HH/HV or VV/VH) Single Look Complex data set. To facilitate the analysis of the physical information provided by the eigen decomposition of the coherency matrix, two secondary parameters are defined as a function of the eigenvalues and eigenvectors. The technique allows good performance with respect to the quad polarization.

Data Export

EnviSeries to NetCDF Conversion enables the analysis of multitemporal data in other tools such as ArcGIS. It includes Time-Series SAR Intensity and Time-Series deformation (SBAS).

SARscape and ENVI Server allows you to process SAR data in the background while visually inspecting the outcomes.

Other Improvements

TDM 90 (World DEM TanDEM-X)

The Digital Surface Model (DSM) tiles of the WorldDEM TanDEM-X (90 M resolution) are downloaded from the DLR (German Aerospace Center) service

GMTED-2010

The enhanced global elevation model Global Multi-resolution Terrain Elevation Data (GMTED-2010) is included in the SARscape installer (offline use)

Workflows

A single step workflow to import data, perform sample selection (spatial subsetting), and download a DEM

Multilooking

Two processing algorithms are now available – Time Domain (traditional) and Frequency Domain (new)

Import Generic SAR

Includes sample selection/spatial subsetting

Persistent Scatterers

Performance improvement in wide areas
Output results in raster format to enable raster displacement decomposition

SBAS

New folder structure
Thresholds to filter interferograms quality (Edit Connection Graph)
New linear periodic model (1st & 2nd inversion)
Use of different model 1st & 2nd inversion
Filtering of outliers for displacement and height calculation
Threshold to define the minimum number of connections per acquisition to reduce redundancy
Displacement time series is reported to zero, if the interpolation is performed in the Second Step/Parameters

Tide Height Download