SAR Capabilities
The COSMO-SkyMed satellites have three basic types of imaging modes:
- Spotlight, a high-resolution mode collected over a small area by steering the radar beam slightly fore-to-aft during the collection period.
- Stripmap, a medium-resolution mode collected over long, continuous swaths in which the beam is pointed broadside to the satellite track.
- ScanSAR, a low-resolution mode that creates extra-wide swaths by collecting short segments at different ranges and then mosaicking them together.
There are two Spotlight modes:
- SPOTLIGHT1, which is a military-only mode, and
- SPOTLIGHT2, which provides a resolution of 1 m over a 10 km x 10 km area. Spotlight polarization is limited to either HH or VV
There are two Stripmap modes:
- HIMAGE, which provides a resolution of between 3 and 5 m over a swath of 40 km, and
- PINGPONG, which collects dual-polarization data at 15 m resolution over a swath of 30 km. The dual-polarization data can consist of any two polarizations (HH, VV, VH, HV), and it is non-coherent, as it is collected in "pulse groups" that alternate from one polarization to the other.
There are two ScanSAR modes:
- WIDEREGION, which provides 30 m resolution data over a swath of 100 km, and
- HUGEREGION, which provides 100 m resolution data over a swath of 200 km.
The system is sized to collect up to 450 images per satellite per day.
Read more about this topic: COSMO-Sky Med
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