Alaska Satellite Facility - Distributed Active Archive Center

ALOS PALSAR – Documents and Tools

PALSAR

Name Description
ALOS Data Users Handbook, 2008 Overview of the ALOS Project and related technological information on satellites and land systems
ALOS User Guide Overview, products, product format, operations
PALSAR Product Format Detailed L1.1 and L1.5 product format description
PALSAR Product Format
(a zip file will download)
Detailed L1.0 product format description

Radiometrically Terrain-Corrected (RTC)

Name Description
RTC Product Guide, 2015 Guide for radiometrically terrain-corrected products.
RTC Product Specification, 2014 This product format specification defines standard terrain-corrected products generated at ASF. It contains the definition for the ISO-compliant XML metadata.
RTC ATBD, 2015 Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document: Provides the theoretical background of the algorithms and processing flows used for the generation of terrain-corrected products processed by ASF.

Software Tools

Name Description
MapReady, ASF Terrain correct, geocode, and apply polarimetric decompositions to multi-pol SAR data
Convert to Vector, ASF Transform point or scene information to formats compatible with Google Earth, GIS, and more
SAR Training Processor, ASF We apologize, but this tool is no longer available
Bulk Download, ASF Bulk download from the ASF datapool via Metalink files
Other Software Tools Access a variety of tools for viewing, analyzing, and processing radar data

GIS Platforms

RTC GeoTIFF products are readily visualized in GIS programs such as ArcGIS or QGIS.

Name Description
QGIS: open source Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD
ArcGIS: commercial software Windows, Linux

Processors

PALSAR Processor versions used to process data at ASF
Processing Dates Processor Version JAXA Calibration Result as of (MM-DD-YYYY)
April 18, 2007- April 26, 2007 3.00 10-23-2006
3-29-2007
April 27, 2007- March 17, 2008 4.00 3-29-2007
9-28-2007
March 18, 2008 - June 12, 2008 4.03 9-28-2007
June 13, 2008 - February 3, 2009 5.00 9-28-2007
February 4, 2008 - ? 5.04 9-28-2007
7-1-2009
September, 2013 6.07 9-6-2011
Optical Processor versions used to process data at ASF
Processing Dates Processor Version JAXA Calibration Result as of (MM-DD-YYYY)
April 18, 2007- April 26, 2007 3.00 10-23-2006
3-29-2007
April 27, 2007- March 30, 2009 4.01 3-29-2007
9-28-2007
March 31, 2009 - February 3, 2010 5.02 9-28-07
7-1-2009
February 4, 2010 - January 18, 2011 5.09 7-1-2009
January 18, 2011 - Present 6.03 7-1-2009