Sensor Independent Derived Data (SIDD) Standard

The Sensor Independent Derived Data (SIDD) format is designed to store Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) derived image products and associated metadata that is grouped around common tasks for downstream users. It is meant to be used in conjunction with the Sensor Independent Complex Data (SICD) standard to define format standards for SAR image processing. The sponsor for this activity is NGA.

The SIDD standard is broken into three documents

• SIDD Design & Implementation Document - provides metadata specifications for common tasks which are designed to support basic exploitation, geographic measurements, exploitation, and proper visual display. Additionally, this document specifies the SIDD supported coordinate systems and product image pixel arrays. This document covers the following:

• Image Pixel Array Definition
• Coordinate Systems
• Primitive Data Types
• Extensible Markup Language (XML) Schema Definition
• Product Metadata Definitions
• Coordinate Mapping Models
• Display Guidance

• SIDD NITF File Format Document- specifies the placement of SIDD products into the NITF 2.1 container. The NITF 2.1 file container format is described in MIL-STD-2500C, National Imagery Transmission Format, Version 2.1, dated 01 May 2006. The following topics are covered.

• Capabilities & Limitations
• File Container Organization
• File Container Metadata
• SIDD Product Metadata
• SIDD Product Image Pixel Data

• SIDD GeoTIFF File Format Document - specifies the placement of SIDD products into the GeoTIFF 1.0 format. The GeoTIFF 1.0 file container format is based on TIFF 6.0, currently controlled by Adobe. The following topics are covered.

• Capabilities & Limitations
• File Container Organization
• File Container Metadata
• SIDD Product Metadata
• SIDD Product Image Pixel Data

In addition to the above documents, a SIX C++ library reference has been implemented and is hosted in the git repository on this site.