Each application can best be served by specific Sentinel-1 acquisition modes and product types as shown in the table below. The Interferometric Wide swath mode is the primary operation mode for most applications over land.

Note: for a number of small volcanic islands worldwide, from May 2015 onwards, the Stripmap mode (SM) is used for the regular coverage. This is implemented in the case a SM swath fully covers the island in one pass, and no maritime surveillance activities take place around the island. The SM mode features (at a comparable system resource consumption) a smaller swath w.r.t the IW mode (in the order of 80 km vs 250 km) but ensures a higher spatial resolution, of particular interest for volcano monitoring.

Refer to the High-Level Operation Plan (HLOP) for a description of the acquisition strategy.