MIDAS: a software for radiometric and polarimetric processing of EOS-04 SAR data

Earth observation satellite-04 or EOS-04 (Radar imaging satellite-1A or RISAT-1A) provides the opportunity for characterization of surface features using C-band fully-polarimetric, hybrid-polarimetric and dual-polari­metric radar data from same platform in high to mode­rate resolution (2–50 m depending on mode) and varied incidence angle (12°–55°). These unique EOS-04 radar datasets can be processed using Microwave Data Analysis Software (MIDAS) tool, to derive radar polarimetric parameters. MIDAS is capable of carrying out synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data processing comprising radio­metric and majority of the polarimetric processing of EOS-04 datasets. In addition, MIDAS has the functiona­lity to orthorectify and geocode EOS-04 polarimetric products, which is missing in other softwares. Further, MIDAS contains module for bulk-processing of time-series EOS-04 products. We showcase results obtained from EOS-04 datasets and describe the scattering behaviour of various targets. Further, we also demonstrate the temporal variation in the backscatter values from different target features obtained from EOS-04 time-series stack, which has strong applicability in land use/land cover and agricultural applications. Thus, the radiometric and polarimetric products can be highly beneficial for characterization of physical properties of the scatterers based on their radar scattering behaviour and further classification of the surface features