Reading SHARAD EDRs

We were contacted by a user trying to read SHARAD EDR data with ReadPDS3 for IDL, but that tool does not read the bit fields and three-byte integers in the data product, and as it is a PDS3 tool it is not likely to be developed further.

We suggested the following tools for working with SHARAD data.

There was a SHARAD/MARSIS workshop at LPSC in 2014. Presentations are on the Geosciences Node’s web site at https://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/workshops/sharadmarsis_Mar14.html. There's one by Than Putzig about the CO-SHARPS Processing Boutique, software that reads SHARAD products (not clear if he means EDRs, RDRs, or both) and creates radargrams, among other things. To get the software you have to request it from PSI at https://www.psi.edu/SHARAD.

There are links to other software packages on the workshop page, but nothing specifically for reading EDRs. Most people prefer to use the RDRs. 

We have also posted an IDL script for generating browse images on the SHARAD page (https://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/missions/mro/sharad.htm), as an example of how to read an RDR product. It might be possible to modify the code to read an EDR.

Finally, we have some C# code to read the SHARAD EDRs, but the code does not read every field in the *.dat file. If you can let us know which fields you are interested in, we can try to modify the code to see if it works.

The user replied, "for now that's fine for us skipping the unread fields. We could read the other data columns by slightly modifying the label/fmts of the SHARAD EDR. In case we would have to actually use those specific fields, I think that we could implement some specific reading routines, but it is some time to spend we don't really have for a non-critical purpose."