NEST: An esa open source Toolbox for scientific exploitation of SAR data

Abstract

The Next ESA SAR Toolbox (NEST) is a free and open source toolbox suite for reading, processing, analysis and visualization of SAR data. The toolbox is developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) under the GNU GPL license. The toolbox supports the exploitation of SAR data from ESA's space-borne SAR missions (ERS-1&2, ENVISAT), and also of other space-borne sensors (e.g., TerraSAR-X, RADARSAT 1&2, COSMO-SkyMed, JERS-1, ALOS PALSAR). The input data is SAR data processed to Level-1 or higher. NEST provides basic and advanced tools for SAR user community, such as an absolute calibration, automatic coregistration of detected and complex products, multilooking, speckle filtering, external precise obit ingestion, geocoding, mosaicking and a Product Library Metadata Database, etc. In addition to this basic processing toolset, NEST offers a collection of routines for oil spill and ship detection, and wind field estimation. Finally, a fully integrated and featured InSAR processor is being implemented into NEST.