SAR preprocessing workflow

Microwave Toolbox
#1

I was working on Sentinel 1 SAR GRD (EW mode) imagery from Copernicus when I came across this workflow here.

Screen Shot 2021-02-14 at 10.04.16 AM

Questions:

  1. Is there a reason that the imagery providers don’t pass the imagery through this workflow before providing it? I assume because every user has different needs. But these steps seem too general which leads me to my next question.
  2. Do we always have to process our SAR GRD products via this workflow? What might be the cases where you don’t want to do them.

For context, I’m looking into applying segmentation and classification algorithms on SAR imagery and was wondering if this workflow is necessary.

I’m new to SAR image processing so would appreciate any input.