Dear all,
after more than one year of pandemic, lockdowns and all related issues and troubles, we want to summarize a bit what is going on about Sarproz.
1. SARPROZ COURSES.
As you know, we have switched to an online remote mode for delivering Sarproz courses. Next SAR/InSAR Sarproz course will be held in June. Please write to courses at sarproz dot com for more infos.
2. SARPROZ DEVELOPMENTS (and migration to Matlab 2017a)
In the past year we have worked mainly on three major topics: A) the Sentinel world, B) supporting new sensors and imaging modes and C) improving automatic processing, command line mode and update mode.
A. The Sentinel world.
Many things have been changed/improved about Sentinel data processing. Many functions have been drastically speeded up, new algorithms have been developed for better managing and solving issues arising from long data series processing and fine coregistration even in case of low coherence. A sea mask has been introduced; new ways of quick initial coherence estimation have been implemented; new logs are now available in the EXT folder; a new dataset.txt file for Sentinel discarded images is generated in case of fine coregistration failure (so that you can still use the images if you need e.g. to check just the amplitude); processing of small areas (within a single burst) is now possible; updates are now much better managed (even for sparse old data); in case one step of the coregistration process fails, there is no need to repeat those which were correctly performed.
New ESA orbits and Matlab 2017a.
But the most important update is related to orbital data: in March 2017 ESA changed the orbital data repository, requiring to connect to a webpage via user/password login. To allow keeping the automatic download of Sentinel orbital file, Sarproz now needs to be compiled with a more recent Matlab version. We have then decided to progressively migrate towards Matlab 2017a. In the next months, we will stop updating the Sarproz version compiled with Matlab 2014a. You can still keep using the old Sarproz version, but you won’t be able to automatically download the new Sentinel orbits. To install the newer Sarproz version compiled with Matlab 2017a you need to do the following:
* write to support at sarproz dot com indicating that you need the new Sarproz compiled version and (important!) indicating which operating system you are using
* download and install the new Matlab Runtime R2017a (9.2). Note: Mathworks offers an update for MCR 9.2 to fix a security issue. You might want to download and install it as well, however, it is not strictly necessary, because this is not going to affect the Sarproz package.
* run the new Sarproz version using the license you already have.
Note: we conducted some tests and we can confirm that the new ESA orbits are more accurate. Thus, we suggest you to use the new orbits (if you deem it worth, -we think in normal situations this is not necessary-, you could re-process your data with the new orbits. If you want to do it, you have to re-start from the beginning and re-coregister the data with the new orbital files).
B. New sensors and imaging modes.
New features are now available and many changes were implemented for Cosmo SkyMed Second Generation, ICEYE, Saocom and Gaofen-3.
To accommodate for the new Cosmo CSG features, we have implemented a system that now allows generating multi-temporal multi-polarization projects (you can coregister multiple polarizations at the same time. The software uses a polarization as reference and resamples all other polarizations with the same coefficients). To make this possible, now image names contain date plus also the polarization.
Since ICEYE can acquire multiple images even in the same day, we have implemented a naming convention that can include, beside date and polarization, also a unique ID. We have also improved the coregistration algorithm to allow coregistering ICEYE images with huge geometric baselines. For this purpose, now Sarproz gives a message about the impact of geometric distortion base on baseline and local topography. To correct high distortions, you can coregister using an external DEM.
New imaging modes are then now supported for Gaofen-3 and for Saocom.
C. Automatic processing.
Many customers are using more and more the command line mode of Sarproz. To accommodate all needs, we have included a number of new functions in the command line mode: multi-temporal mask generation, sub-dateset extraction, extended geocoding, change detection, coherence map generation. More options are then available, like for Master selection, for processing exporting series of images/interferograms and more. Particular attention was paid to update processes, since more and more people are dealing with InSAR monitoring projects where you need to regularly add new images.
Best wishes and good work to everyone