SOPA - SHARAD Open Processing Attempt

SOPA is thought to be a suite of open source algorithms for SHAllow RADar (SHARAD) low-level data processing written in python v3.

At the time of writing the suite includes:

• data reading with common interface for:
  • PDS Italian EDR raw data (echoes and geometric data*);
  • PDS Italian RDR focused data (echoes and geometric data*)
  • CO-SHARPS raw data (echoes and full ancillary dataset);
  • PDS US RDR focused data (echoes and geometric data**);
• an "essential" version of SOFA (SHARAD Open Focusing Attempt, http://af-projects.it/sofa), a focuser that, besides standard nadir focusing, allows squinted synthetic aperture radar processing***;
• surface clutter simulators****:
  • dRSsim, a dummy radar sounder surface clutter simulator;
  • sfRSsim, an enhanced simulator using square facets that can use a cos^exp law to reduce the effect of surfaces not facing the radar;
• plotting tools for quick visualization of focused radargrams, simulations, ground distance images, and first return maps superimposed to the DEM.

Unfortunately, almost no documentation is provided. An example program showing how to use the main functions can be found in the root of the project.

*Orbits extracted from PDS Italian data may be not sufficiently precise for data acquired before 2013.

**Orbits extracted from PDS US RDR data may be not sufficiently precise for supporting simulations and or focusing.

***By now, SOFA can handle only night time radargrams as no correction of ionosphere effects has been implemented yet.

****The simulation principles are similar to those described in http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TGRS.2012.2219315.

Feel free to contact me for any help (contacts here: http://af-projects.it/contacts).

NOTE: This project has not been developed during my work at the University of Trento, nor it has been supported by the University of Trento in any way.

Requirements

SOPA has been tested only in a Linux environment using python v3.5 and the following modules:

• sys
• math
• os
• glob (needed only for parsing CO-SHARPS data)
• datetime
• gzip (needed only if txt files related to CO-SHARPS ancillary data have been downloaded gzipped)
• numpy 1.17.4
• scipy 1.3.2
• bitstring (needed only for PDS Italian EDR data)
• ray 0.7.3 (needed only for parallel computation in surface clutter simulators and SOFA, not mandatory)
• matplotlib 3.0.3 (needed only for plotting classes)

Current version

0.02

Disclaimer

The author does not guarantee that this software will always provide correct results nor that it will not crash your hardware. In any case, any use of SOPA is ONLY user responsibility. The use of SOPA or part of it for the creation of any sub-product (e.g., scientific papers, posters, images, other softwares) must be acknowledged. As you may imagine, the code is not optimized for fast running.