| Slice Assembly |
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The SENTINEL-1 SAR is capable of operating up to 25 minutes per orbit in any of the three high bit rate modes (SM, IW, EW). To avoid distributing huge unwieldy products to end users, the Level-0 and Level-1 products are segmented into 'slices' of defined length along a track. Product slices make the data more manageable for users and enable the ground segment to process slice data in parallel.
Each product slice is a stand-alone product that can be processed independently. Slices are ~25 seconds in length for SM and IW and ~60 seconds for EW. Each GeoTIFF band within a product slice will be no larger than 2 GB. However, since a product could contain several bands for swaths and polarisations, the overall product size could be much larger.
WV data is not sliced and the full segment is processed into Level-2.
Level-1 slice products are of seamless quality without any data gap or duplicated lines and with no geometric, radiometric or phase discontinuity. Sliced products may be seamlessly combined, including the metadata, into an assembled product. Product assembly follows specific rules for including, merging and concatenating the various components of the slice products.
The amount of black-fill at near and far range of the Level-1 image can vary with the segment length. The longer the segment the more black-fill is potentially needed.
Slice products can be combined to form an assembled Level-1 product with the same product characteristics covering the complete segment. Assembly is performed following the three strategies of Include, Merge and Concatenate.
