Suggestion: Could the Sentinel-1 tiles be stored as int8 instead of float32? about kurosiwo HOT 2 CLOSED

Hey @Multihuntr ,
the kurosiwo_slc.py provides the functionality to acquire the respective SLC SAR products. These contain complex data (both amplitude and phase information). The main KuroSiwo dataset, however, comprises of processed GRD SAR data (phase information is lost (check section 3 of the paper for more details about the preprocessing)).
We provide this script to enable the users to utilize KuroSiwo without commiting to our preprocessing decisions e.g exploit the phase information or follow a different preprocessing pipeline. In a similar manner a user may download the initial GRD products etc.
We do not plan to cast to int8 as this would result in important information loss.

from kurosiwo.

I see. Thank you for clarifying for me the function of that script, and pointing me towards the section for more details.

From what I see, GRD versions are provided as amplitude in int16 to keep file sizes down, and downstream users are expected to translate to intensity in float32 for processing? In my other work, using other types of images, I store as int then use GDAL/GeoTiff's scale and offset parameters to convert to float. I think it's a good system, so I suggested it. If you are worried about losing precision, I guess I understand. Just wanted to mention it as a possibility.

https://forum.step.esa.int/t/intensity-bands-vh-vv/18423/3
https://forum.step.esa.int/t/difference-between-amplitude-and-intensity/8828

from kurosiwo.