ALOS-2 acquisition strategy

The Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2 (ALOS-2) carries the state-of-the-art L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) called PALSAR-2 which succeed to the ALOS / PALSAR. Since more acquisition modes of PALSAR-2 than those of PALSAR may trigger more conflicts among user requests, systematic acquisition strategy is very important to achieve the mission requirements. For example, trade-off studies have been made for INSAR basemap data acquisition through discussion with user groups, and an optimum scenario was proposed to fulfill both requirements for quick response and time-series data acquisition under a same condition (incidence angle, descending/ascending, left/right look). As the ALOS data resulted in a comprehensive and homogeneous global archive, consistent data archives will be requested for ALOS-2 as well. This paper describes a draft acquisition strategy for PALSAR-2.