
Sarsen: Open source library for SAR satellite image processing
Project reference period: 2016 - on going
Open Source (partially sponsored by Microsoft)
Project Description
Sarsen is a collection of Open Source algorithms to process Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite data in Python by B-Open. It currently supports geocoding and gamma flattening Sentinel-1 data on any DEM, and partially sponsored by Microsoft:
Sarsen comes with a command line tool that creates GTC and RTC images on the exact pixels of a reference DEM starting from Sentinel-1 GDR or SLC products. The quality of the geometric and the radiometric terrain-correction is very good and performance is acceptable, but will be improved in future releases.
The short-term aim is to support full cloud-native processing on Azure Planetary Computer straight off their upcoming Sentinel-1 GRD archive with user supplied DEMs.
Overall, Sarsen is currently in alpha, but mostly because we reserve the right to change the APIs. As far as we know the geocoding is already good enough for interferometric processing.
B-Open’s Role
Sarsen uses another Open Source package developed by B-Open and which parses Sentinel-1 using xarray (Xarray-sentinel GitHub repo, web page).