{"id":5537,"date":"2023-04-20T01:36:18","date_gmt":"2023-04-19T17:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/?p=5537"},"modified":"2026-06-22T10:53:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T02:53:29","slug":"what-is-sar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/what-is-sar\/","title":{"rendered":"What is SAR?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is a specific satellite that can capture imagery in all weather conditions, day or night. SAR<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> sends a microwave radar signal to the earth\u2019s surface to detect physical properties. Depending on the ground feature\u2019s properties, some or all of the signal will bounce back up to the sensor creating an image of the ground.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is a great tool for capturing images of areas of the world with significant cloud cover, where optical satellites cannot see through the clouds to the ground. SAR imagery can also be useful during severe weather and disaster management. The ability to capture imagery at night also increases how often the satellite can collect imagery.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are various SAR sensors, which are classified based on the wavelength of their radar signal that is emitted. The different SAR wavelengths are called bands and are designated by letters (ex. X, L, P).\u00a0 EarthCache has X-Band SAR, which is a common type of high resolution SAR. The use cases for SAR data vary depending on the band wavelength.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>When is SAR used?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Below are some example use cases for X-Band SAR:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Top-of-canopy analysis for vegetation management. A longer wavelength (X-band is shorter than the SAR wavelengths) is needed to get information on the lower canopy on a forest floor.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Waterbody monitoring \u2013 change in the extent of waterbodies, monitoring of wave heights<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Soil moisture measurements<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">3D modelling \u2013 SAR can be used for the generation of digital elevation models<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ground deformation or subsidence mapping \u2013 Interferometric SAR (InSAR) technique can be used to monitor the movement of the ground which can help to generate warning systems for infrastructure instability, landslides, mine wall collapses, right of way monitoring and more.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oil spill detection and monitoring<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Port and Ship monitoring<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Flood monitoring \u2013 Good at detecting water and can be useful when clouds often coincide with flooding events.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here is an example of a SAR image provided by ICEYE.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/ICEYE-United_States_New_York_City_03_2020-2.webp\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-5561\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/ICEYE-United_States_New_York_City_03_2020-2.webp\" alt=\"SAR image\" width=\"700\" height=\"467\" srcset=\"\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/ICEYE-United_States_New_York_City_03_2020-2.webp 1600w, \/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/ICEYE-United_States_New_York_City_03_2020-2-300x200.webp 300w, \/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/ICEYE-United_States_New_York_City_03_2020-2-1024x683.webp 1024w, \/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/ICEYE-United_States_New_York_City_03_2020-2-768x512.webp 768w, \/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/ICEYE-United_States_New_York_City_03_2020-2-1536x1024.webp 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><br \/>\n(Click to enlarge)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is a specific satellite that can capture imagery in all weather conditions, day or night. SAR sends a microwave radar signal to the earth\u2019s surface to detect physical properties. Depending on the ground feature\u2019s properties, some or all of the signal will bounce back up to the sensor creating an image [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[163,157],"class_list":["post-5537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-insar","tag-sar"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5537"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5537"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5565,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5537\/revisions\/5565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}