Software Development for Polarimetric SAR Data Processing: PolSDP Shaunak De, Rinki Deo, G. Raghuram, Y. S. Rao CSRE, IIT-Bombay Powai, Mumbai-400076 1 shaunakde@iitb.ac.in Abstract— This paper describes the details of Polarimetric SAR data processing (PolSDP) software being developed indigenously at the CSRE, IIT-Bombay, under the sponsorship of Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). It aims to be a toolbox for PolSAR data processing, allowing the user to easily run various steps like exporting data from SLC files, processing, classification and decomposition of T3 matrix and C2 matrix, Geocoding, Surface inversion, Target Detection etc. It will be made freely available to users. Keywords— PolSAR, Polarimetry, Remote Sensing, PolSDP, Radar I. INTRODUCTION Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) are rapidly emerging as able tools for earth observation, biophysical and geophysical parameter monitoring. PolSAR techniques are being widely employed in applications like crop monitoring, damage assessment, in land cover, land surface and land use monitoring, in soil moisture estimation and flood delineation, in forestry and deforestation mapping, in oceanography, sea ice monitoring and coastal monitoring, etc. [7] PolSAR processing software has been developed by some organizations across the world like PolSARPro [1] and RAT [2] (Radar Tools). However these software tools, although capable and adept, have some demerits, which we have attempted to improve upon in our implementation. These are written for a very wide user-base and are designed to be cross platform, making them a little complicated and arduous to use. Some commercial remote sensing software like ENVI and ERDAS IMAGINE also implement PolSAR capability. However the capabilities of these tools are very basic and also very expensive. II. SURVEY OF AVAILABLE TOOLS Following is a list of currently available PolSAR tools along with a short description of their features, merits and demerits: 1. Radar Tools (RAT): This is an open source software tool which originally started as a student’s project and currently under further development at the Department of Computer Vision and Remote Sensing of the Technical University of Berlin. This project implements advanced SAR algorithms including polarimetry and interferometry. It supports a large number of data formats and platforms. Linux, Unix and Mac OSX are supported and Windows support is listed as experimental. The software is written in IDL. However, as IDL is an interpreted language, it executes slower than a native C/C++ program. Furthermore, the knowledge of IDL is not very widespread, making it difficult for researchers to modify the software for their purposes. Also the size of processed files is often large, since it stores its results in a single file. 2. PolSARPro v4.2: It is a PolSAR data processing software developed under contract to the ESA and is freely available. It comprises of various routines written in C with a GUI written in Tcl/Tk. It is cross platform and runs on Windows, Linux and UNIX. It supports a variety of spaceborne and airborne sensors, and implements a wide range of algorithms and techniques for SAR data analysis. It is designed to integrate well into a wide variety of other software tools like ASF Map-Ready, NEST and Google Earth. It is easy to modify due to the modular nature of the software. However Windows users may find the interface a little quirk-some. Software tools that are currently available also do not support data from Indian satellite RISAT-1. PolSDP endeavours to support data supplied in the RISAT-CEOS format. III. CONCEPT The software was designed keeping in mind the project specifications, the needs of the user and the features that are lacking or missing in other available solutions. The following points were considered: