SEAWSS Simulator
The main function of the simulator is to compute images, representing the Earth scene scanned by the remote sensing instrument, as well as the image acquired by the instrument.

The system simulated includes: the Earth target, the satellite motion, the instrument, and the on-ground data processing. This process figures a chain of signal processing, where each step corresponds to a type of image. In the simulator, there are in general two images of each type. One corresponds to the simulated "truth", one to the remotely sensed image.

seawif

The ocean colour remote sensing simulator will include all steps up to and including geometrical corrections. Level 2 processing is not included in the simulator, which nevertheless provides all facilities to run an atmosphere correction and geo-physical processing on its outputs.

A complete image simulation requires a large amount of processing resources. The simulator shall be organised so that a user can fully prepare a simulation execution by setting the simulation parameters, then run the simulation with very little interaction (including "batch" modes). At the end of the computations several images and data are available for analysis. So the input "truth" image can be compared to the output image of the same level.

By running several simulations with variations of a sub-set of input parameters, one can directly investigate the impact of a parameter on the global system performance.

Input parameters allow to control the behaviour of all the numerical models included in the simulator. Some parameters are organised in bi-dimensional images, fed at the input of the simulation process, such as for instance the water constituents concentrations (chlorophyll, yellow substance...).

Other parameters are scalar, vectors or matrices and represent a physical or logical value, constant for a given simulation. Every simulation will allow the modification of all input parameters.