An Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR), operating at C-band, ASAR ensures continuity with the image mode (SAR) and the wave mode of the ERS-1/2 AMI. It features enhanced capability in terms of coverage, range of incidence angles, polarisation, and modes of operation. This enhanced capability is provided by significant differences in the instrument design: a full active array antenna equipped with distributed transmit/receive modules which provides distinct transmit and receive beams, a digital waveform generation for pulse "chirp" generation, a block adaptive quantisation scheme, and a ScanSAR mode of operation by beam scanning in elevation.
Status
Operational
Type
Imaging microwave radars
Technical Characteristics
Accuracy
Radiometric resolution in range: 1.5-3.5 dB
Spatial Resolution
Image, Wave and Alternating Polarisation modes: approx 30m x 30m. Wide Swath mode: approx 150m x 150m. Global Monitoring mode: approx 1000m x 1000m.
Swath Width
Image and alternating polarisation modes: up to 100km, Wave mode: 5km, Wide swath and global monitoring modes: 400km or more
Waveband
Microwave: C-band, with choice of 5 polarisation modes (VV, HH, VV/HH, HV/HH, or VH/VV)
Applications
Ocean and Coast (Ocean Currents and Topography)
Land (Landscape Topography)
Snow and Ice (Snow and Ice)
ESA makes freely available to the user community a dataset of (A)SAR
products (Envisat and ERS) corresponding to the earthquake of Haiti which
took place on 12 January 2010. Information on the dataset is available on
the Earth Watching web site. Population of
the archive is still ongoing.
The dataset can be downloaded through the ESA Virtual Archive
or directly via the EOLI-SA catalogue from "Other Collections - Virtual
Archive - Haiti Earthquake"
A GEO Supersite portal for Haiti has also been set up in cooperation with
ESA containing the above mentioned dataset, other data and related
information.
ESA offers free access to the Virtual Archive also to other data providers
allowing data sharing in line with the GEO principles. This infrastructure
is supporting the download of very high data volumes performed simultaneously.
EO Data Access
