pixelcooker

SAR data can be used for many types of applications. Distinct characteristics compared to optical imagery makes SAR data stand out in its own way. One of the applicable use of SAR data is for maritime transport monitoring. SAR data with its unique backscatter mechanism could be used for ship detection and tracking. This is possible because the body of the ship double bouncing the radar backscatter when it is returned to the sensor, so the recorded energy would be doubling out and makes the ships look so bright in the SAR images compared to the water background that has low pixels value. And because radar SAR imagery is geocoded to a known coordinate system, finding the ship's coordinates at a certain time is also quite easy.  Now if we have operational SAR satellites that have a short temporal revisit (one day for example), the ship's detection, and tracking would be better because we could monitor the ship's position daily. We don't have this kind of service right now ...