The time from the acquisition of satellite Earth Observation data to the delivery of products to the end user can be reduced by processing the data on board the satellite. For EO-ALERT, two groups of MF-SAR teamed up to create a prototype SAR processing chain running both L1 image generation and L2 processing of maritime products on an MPSoC board, combining an FPGA with an ARM CPU. Our partners did the same for optical image processing, data handling, and data transfer.
The user receives so-called „alerts“ containing only the necessary information and not the full EO product. From the acquired L0 raw data to the alerts in the hand of the end user via satellite-to-satellite communication, ship detection on a 400 km² SAR scene takes less than one minute. It is envisaged to bring this technology on board of future EO satellites.