The OLCI data format follows the format defined for each Sentinel-3 product in the PDGS product specification and is based on SENTINEL-SAFE.

SENTINEL-SAFE is based on the XML Formatted Data Units (XFDU) developed by the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS). SENTINEL-SAFE is a profile of XFDU, and it restricts the XFDU specifications for specific utilisation in the EO domain, providing semantics in the same domain to improve interoperability between ground segment facilities.

Figure 2: XFDU package schema

Each product package includes:

• a manifest file containing a metadata section and a data object section
• measurement data files
• annotation data files, if defined
• for Level-0 only, representation data files (XML files describing the binary information).

Sentinel-3 user products are disseminated in Product Dissemination Units (PDU), in order to ease the online dissemination and data handling for the users. The PDU is a portion of data and is defined per product type.

Table 5: Description and content of the OLCI product package. The estimated size corresponds to a half orbit without consideration about compression, with NRT/NTC less than 3/48 hours after measurement by satellite

• EFR        Earth Observation Full Resolution
• ERR        Earth Observation Reduced Resolution
• RAC        Radiometric Calibration
• SPC        Spectral Calibration
• WFR       Water Full Resolution
• LFR         Land Full Resolution
• WRR       Water Reduced Resolution
• LRR        Land Reduced Resolution