Weird objects on sentinel1 IW VH image

Anyone know what are these bright spots

Is there a harbor or airbase in your area?
These patterns look like radio frequency interference (RFI). Here you can find some examples

You can see multiple examples of interesting effects in these slides: Radiometric artifacts on SAR images - ppt download

Hi all,

Wondring if anyone would know the cause of these noise as shown in capture below?

Many thanks!

I merged both topics because they deal with the same issue.

Those are typical pattern of Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) observed on Sentinel-1 images.
It occurs when the instrument is collecting other radio emission from other emitter in the same frequency band.
This one is typical of ground emitters.

However, this can occur as well from spaceborne emitter.
On this topic you may have a look to this:
https://sentinel.esa.int/documents/247904/0/Sentinel-1-Long-Duration-Mutual-Interference/291c4e07-c546-4085-8c36-aef390850223

The recent versions of the SAR processor is able to mitigate those RFI. However, this feature is not yet activated. Should be done in the coming month.
The S-1 Mission Performance Cluster is preparing a technical note on how to spot the presence of RFI in S-1 products (depending on the versions of the SAR processor used for the generation of the product, and on its configuration).

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Hi ghajduh,

Wondering if there is any news regarding the technical note you mentioned in your post, or is there a website where I can keep an eye on for the publishment of the document?

Thanks a lot!

Hi @sanchez ,

The technical note dedicated on RFI is still not yet published, but it should be in the coming week (thus very soon now).

The purpose of the tech note was increased to consider the limitations of the RFI mitigation.

However, please remind that even if the processor now has this capacity, the RFI mitigation is not activated yet.

Best regards

Hi @ghajduch ,

Thanks for your quick reply and the reminder!

And would it be possible to let me know that where I could check for the update of the note in the coming weeks? Sorry I am still new to this area…

Kind regards

Hi @sanchez ,
The Technical note is now published and available here:

Best regards

Hi @ghajduch ,

Thank you so much for your reply, it helps a lot!

Best regards :grinning:

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Hi, how to reprocess images affected by previous version (IPF version 3.31) I want to mitigate RFI,in Snap or others? thank you!