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THE WORLD’S NEWSSTAND®
CALL FOR PAPERS
IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine
This is the fifth issue of the new IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine, which was approved by the IEEE
Technical Activities Board in 2012. This is an important achievement for GRSS since it has never had a publication in
the magazine format. The magazine provides a new venue to publish high quality technical articles that by their very
nature do not find a home in journals requiring scientific innovation but that provide relevant information to scientists,
engineers, end-users, and students who interact in different ways with the geoscience and remote sensing disciplines.
The magazine publishes tutorial papers and technical papers on geoscience and remote sensing topics, as well as
papers that describe relevant applications of and projects based on topics addressed by our society.
The magazine also publishes columns on:
- New satellite missions
- Standard remote sensing data sets
- Education in remote sensing
- Women in geoscience and remote sensing
- Industrial profiles
- University profiles
- GRSS Technical Committee activities
- GRSS Chapter activities
- Conferences and workshops.
The new magazine is published in with an appealing layout, and its articles are included with an electronic format
in the IEEE Xplore online archive. The magazine content is freely available to GRSS members.
This call for papers is to encourage all readers to prepare and submit articles and technical content for review to be
published in the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine. Contributions for the above-mentioned columns of
the magazine are also welcome.
All technical papers will undergo blind review by multiple reviewers. The submission and the review process is managed
at the IEEE Manuscript Central as it is already done for the three GRSS journals. Prospective authors are required to
submit electronically using the website http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/grs and selecting the “Geoscience and Remote
Sensing Magazine” option from the drop-down list. Instructions for creating new user accounts, if necessary, are available on the login screen. No other manners of submission are accepted. Papers should be submitted in single column,
double-spaced format. The review process will assess the technical quality and/or the tutorial value of the contributions.
The magazine will publish also special issues. Readers interested to propose a special issue can contact the Editor In Chief.
For any additional information and for submitting papers contact the Editor In Chief:
Prof. Lorenzo Bruzzone
University of Trento,
Trento, Italy
E-Mail: [email protected]
______________________
Phone: +39 0461 28 2056
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MGRS.2014.2307459
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MARCH 2014
VOLUME 2, NUMBER 1
WWW.GRSS-IEEE.ORG
_____________
FEATURE
8
UAS-Based Radar Sounding
of the Polar Ice Sheets
by C. Leuschen, R. Hale, S. Keshmiri,
J.B. Yan, F. Rodriguez-Morales, A. Mahmood,
and S. Gogineni
GLOBE—© CARTESIA, PLANE—©1995 EXPERT SOFTWARE, INC.,
SATELLITE—WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/RICHARD-59
PG. 8
SCOPE
ON THE COVER:
Radar sounding and imaging of the ice sheets in
Greenland and Antarctica provide valuable information for monitoring and predicting response to
a warming climate.
COVER IMAGE LICENSED BY INGRAM PUBLISHING
IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine will inform
readers of activities in the GRS Society, its technical
committees, and chapters. GRSM will also inform and
educate readers via technical papers, provide information
on international remote sensing activities and new satellite
missions, publish contributions on education activities,
industrial and university profiles, conference news, book
reviews, and a calendar of important events.
MARCH 2014
IEEE GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING MAGAZINE
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COLUMNS &
DEPARTMENTS
4 FROM THE EDITOR
6 PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
18 TECHNICAL COMMITTEES
23 CHAPTERS
29 EDUCATION
34 BOOK REVIEW
38 WOMEN IN GRS
40 CONFERENCE REPORTS
42 INDUSTRIAL PROFILES
47 GRSS MEMBER HIGHLIGHTS
50 CALENDAR
EDITORIAL BOARD 2014
Dr. Lorenzo Bruzzone
Editor-in-Chief
University of Trento
Department of Information Engineering
and Computer Science
Via Sommarive, 5
I-38123 Povo, Trento, ITALY
E-mail: _______________
[email protected]
Dr. William Blackwell
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Lexington, MA 02420-9108, USA
E-mail: ________
[email protected]
Dr. Michael Inggs
University of Cape Town
Rondebosch, 7701, RSA
E-mail: __________
[email protected]
Dr. John Kerekes
Rochester Institute of Technology
54 Lomb Memorial Dr.
Rochester, NY 14623, USA
E-mail: _________
[email protected]
Dr. Fabio Pacifici
DigitalGlobe
E-mail: _____________
[email protected]
Dr. Gail Skofronick Jackson
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Code 612
Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
E-mail: ____________
[email protected]
Dr. Stephen Volz
NASA Earth Science Div.
300 E St., SW
Washington, DC 20546, USA
E-mail: ________
[email protected]
GRS OFFICERS
President
Dr. Melba M. Crawford
Purdue University, USA
Executive Vice-President
Dr. Kamal Sarabandi
University of Michigan, USA
Vice-President of Meetings and Symposia
Dr. Adriano Camps
Universitat Politecnica de
Catalunya-Barcelona Tech, Spain
Vice-President of Publications
Dr. William Emery
University of Colorado, USA
Vice-President of Technical Activities
Dr. John Kerekes
Rochester Institute of Technology, USA
Vice-President of Professional Activities
Dr. Wooil M. Moon
University of Manitoba, Canada
Vice-President of Information Resources
Dr. Steven C. Reising
Colorado State University, USA
IEEE PERIODICALS
MAGAZINES DEPARTMENT
Associate Editor
Laura Ambrosio
Senior Art Director
Janet Dudar
Assistant Art Director
Gail A. Schnitzer
Production Coordinator
Theresa L. Smith
Business Development Manager
Susan Schneiderman
+1 732 562 3946
[email protected]
___________
Fax: +1 732 981 1855
Advertising Production Manager
Felicia Spagnoli
MISSION STATEMENT
The IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society of the IEEE seeks to advance science and
technology in geoscience, remote sensing and
related fields using conferences, education, and
other resources.
IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine (ISSN 2168-6831) is published
quarterly by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., IEEE
Headquarters: 3 Park Ave., 17th Floor, New York, NY 10016-5997, +1 212 419
7900. Responsibility for the contents rests upon the authors and not upon
the IEEE, the Society, or its members. IEEE Service Center (for orders, subscriptions, address changes): 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854, +1 732
981 0060. Price/Publication Information. Subscriptions: included in Society
fee for each member of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society.
Nonmember subscription prices available on request. Copyright and Reprint
Permissions: Abstracting is permitted with credit to the source. Libraries are
permitted to photocopy beyond the limits of U.S. Copyright Law for private
Production Director
Peter M. Tuohy
Editorial Director
Dawn Melley
Staff Director, Publishing Operations
Fran Zappulla
use of patrons: 1) those post-1977 articles that carry a code at the bottom of
the first page, provided the per-copy fee indicated in the code is paid through
the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923 USA;
2) pre-1978 articles without fee. For all other copying, reprint, or republication
information, write to: Copyrights and Permission Department, IEEE Publishing
Services, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA. Copyright © 2014 by the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. All rights reserved.
IEEE prohibits discrimination, harassment, and bullying. For more information,
visit http://www.ieee.org/web/aboutus/whatis/policies/p9-26.html.
_____
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MARCH 2014
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© WESNet
© Jean-François Bergeron,
Enviro Foto
© Luc-Antoine Couturier
CALL FOR PAPERS
© SCCQ
© SCCQ
Hosted by the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society and the Canadian
Remote Sensing Society, the International Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Symposium 2014 ( IGARSS’14 ) along with the 35th Canadian Symposium on
Remote Sensing ( CSRS ) will be held from Sunday July 13th through Friday July
18th 2014 at the Quebec Convention Center in Québec City, Quebec, Canada.
ABSTRACTS
Abstracts can be submitted on-line at www.igarss2014.org
between November 14th, 2013 and January 13th, 2014. Results
of the revision process will be available on-line by April 4th, 2014.
We are looking forward to receiving your submissions.
The assessment and development of new and renewable sources of energy in
the context of a changing planet is a critical and important issue throughout
the world. IGARSS 2014 and the 35th CSRS will include keynote speakers and
special sessions dedicated to the “Energy” theme.
In addition to a host of well-established IGARSS session themes, the following
special themes will be addressed during the IGARSS 2014 / 35th CSRS :
;,*-"4&)".(&".%.&2(9"."(&-&.4
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IGARSS 2014 / 35 CSRS Technical Co-Chairs
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Dr. Josée Lévesque
Defence Research and Development Canada / Valcartier, Québec City, QC
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Dr. Jean-Marc Garneau
Defence Research and Development Canada / Valcartier, Québec City, QC ( ret )
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Dr. Ellsworth LeDrew
University of Waterloo / Waterloo, ON
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IGARSS 2014 / 35 CSRS General Chair
Dr. Monique Bernier
Institut national de la recherche scientifique ( INRS ) / Québec City, QC
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WW.IGARSS2014.ORG
_________________________
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FROM THE EDITOR
BY LORENZO BRUZZONE
Dear Reader,
I
t is with great pleasure that I welcome you to the first
issue of the second year of publication of the IEEE
Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine. After the initial
phase of the magazine, in the second year we plan to
enrich the content of this publication by establishing
new columns containing many new contributions of
interest to the geoscience and remote sensing community at large.
As one can observe in the four issues of GRSM during
2013, the magazine contains tutorial papers, technical
papers on geoscience and remote sensing topics, and
papers that describe relevant applications of and projects based on topics addressed by our society. All technical papers undergo blind review by multiple reviewers.
The review process is managed on the IEEE Manuscript
Central web site, as is done for the three GRSS journals.
The magazine also contains regular columns on education in remote sensing, remote sensing systems, standard data sets, women in geoscience and remote sensing, and book reviews. Other topics will appear in the
future. Starting with the June issue, we will publish an
extensive column in which space agencies will report
on their recent news and major achievements. This will
keep readers up-to-date on the latest developments of
space agencies and the most interesting news on novel
satellites and Earth Observation programs.
As already announced in December 2013, IEEE
Geoscience and Remote Sensing Administrative Committee decided to distribute both digital and electronic
versions of the magazine to all GRSS members free of
charge during 2014 (one more good reason to be a GRSS
member). This will allow all GRSS members to access
the magazine contents and to become familiar with the
Date of publication: 8 April 2014
4
digital format of the magazine. The digital format is different from the electronic format used by the IEEE Xplore
web site. The digital format allows readers to navigate
and explore the technical content of the magazine with
a look and feel similar to that of a printed magazine.
The electronic version provided on the IEEE Xplore web
site does not have a magazine layout and allows readers
to access individual articles only as separate PDF files.
Moreover, the June issue will be also provided in a more
traditional printed format and widely distributed during our major IGARSS 2014 conference in Quebec City
as well.
This issue includes one article in the Features section.
This article focuses on a recently developed Unmanned
Aircraft System (UAS) equipped with a dual-frequency
radar to sound and image ice sheets in both Greenland
and Antarctica. This system is designed to help monitor the mass loss of ice sheets and its effect on global
sea level rise. To predict the response of ice sheets to a
warming climate, ice-sheet models need to be improved
by incorporating information on the bed topography
and basal conditions of fast-flowing glaciers near their
grounding lines. High-sensitivity, low-frequency radars
with 2-D aperture synthesis capability are needed to
sound and image fast-flowing glaciers with very rough
surfaces and ice that contains inclusions. The article presents a brief overview of the need for radar soundings of
fast-flowing glaciers at low-frequencies and a description
of the system. It also discusses field operations and provides sample results of data collected in Antarctica.
The Technical Committees column describes the activities of the International Spaceborne Imaging Spectroscopy (ISIS) Technical Committee of the IEEE GRSS. The
article presents the principal scope of the committee,
including an interesting overview of the past, current
and planned activities.
MARCH 2014
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The Chapters column presents the GRSS Distinguished
Lecturer Program that recently updated its portfolio of Distinguished Speakers. This program provides GRSS Chapters with seminars by experts on topics of interest and
importance to the geoscience and remote sensing community. The article describes the program and introduces the
speakers, including the topics of their talks. Note that the
program is structured so that Chapters incur little or no
cost when inviting Distinguished Lecturers. Therefore, I
strongly encourage Chapters to take advantage of this very
important initiative.
The Book Review column presents an overview of Land
Surface Observation, Modeling and Data Assimilation, edited
by Shunlin Liang, Xin Li, Xianhong Xie and published by
World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. The review of this
book was written by Claudia Notarnicola of the EURAC—
Institute for Applied Remote Sensing, Bolzano, Italy.
The Education column presents the results of an extensive survey on graduate courses throughout Europe to
understand patterns and similarities in graduate‐level
educational activities in the field of aerospace science and
engineering. The article emphasizes that there is good coverage of all aerospace aspects in Europe, and substantial
homogeneity among European countries in aerospacerelated education.
The Women in Geoscience and Remote Sensing presents
a short article on Sonia Gallego, who is an international
leader in remote sensing, and provides an example of a successful career.
The Reports section contains an article on the two-day
International Experts Meeting on Microwave Remote
Sensing organized by the recently established IEEE-GRSS
Gujarat Chapter in association with CEPT University,
Ahmedabad, at the Gujarat University Convention Centre,
Ahmedabad, India, on 16–17 December 2013.
The Industrial Profiles column deals with trends in the
industry of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) remote sensing
from satellites. The article provides an interesting analysis
of the ongoing activities in SAR remote sensing from satellites and describes the main technological developments,
applications and services provided. Moreover, it briefly
describes the TerraSAR-X next generation program.
The GRSS Member Highlights section, among other
news, contains a brief article that points out that in 2014
IEEE will mark its 50th Fellow Class. This represents five
decades of honoring IEEE Fellows whose extraordinary
accomplishments have changed the world. In addition, the
list of GRSS members elevated to the rank of IEEE Fellow
in 2014 is provided. Congratulations to all them!
Finally, I would like to encourage you to contribute to
the success of the magazine by submitting tutorial papers,
relevant technical articles or column contributions (for
submissions go to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/grsm).
Also, proposals for special issues on specific topics of interest to the GRSS community are welcome.
I wish you an enjoyable and productive spring season.
Sincerely,
Lorenzo Bruzzone
Editor-in-Chief
[email protected]
__________________
GRS
_____________________
___________
MARCH 2014
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PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
BY MELBA CRAWFORD
T
he GRS Magazine (GRSM) completed an outstanding
inaugural year in December, and is now starting its
second year of publication. We appreciate the continued
efforts of the Editor-in-Chief Lorenzo Bruzzone and
his editorial staff, and the contributions from chapters,
technical committees, and other professional activities
of the GRSS to each issue of the GRSM, as well as the
authors of featured articles which have received such
positive reviews.
In April 2014, GRSS will launch its second new publication in 2 years, the GRSS eNewsletter. It will focus on
current announcements of upcoming events and timely
highlights of GRSS activities, international news from
space agencies and industry, and spotlights on members. Fabio Pacifici, its Editor-in-Chief, has developed
an ambitious strategy for providing the publication via
mobile devices as well as traditional web-based platforms on a monthly schedule.
We are extremely pleased that the Society is experiencing solid growth in membership and chapter development, particularly in Regions 8 (Europe, Middle East,
and Africa) and 10 (Asia and Pacific). Growth in GRSS
activity in Region 9 (Latin America) is a current strategic priority, as reflected in our new initiatives for 2014.
Regional liaisons are being appointed to the Chapters
Committee, now chaired by Paolo Gamba, to improve
communication with the AdCom and support local
chapter and membership development. We are also expanding our Distinguished Speakers program in 2014 to
include increased support for regional speakers.
I am pleased to add my congratulations to the ten
members of GRSS who were selected to advance to the
rank of IEEE Fellow. The Class of 2014 includes Thomas
Ainsworth, Joachim Ender, Irena Hajnsek, Scott Hensley, Michael King, Roger King, Toshio Iguchi, Konstan-
tinos Papathanassiou, Daniele Riccio, and Jiacheng Shi.
We also appreciate the outstanding job of the nominators and our GRSS Fellow Evaluation Committee,
chaired by Leung Tsang, and the GRSS Fellow Search
Committee, chaired by Mahta Moghaddam.
We now look forward to IGARSS 2014 in Quebec,
Canada, from July 13–18. The Canadian team reports
that the abstract submission was excellent in both numbers and quality, and that the technical program should
be outstanding. The Remote Sensing Summer School
that preceded IGARSS in 2012 and 2013 is being organized for 2014 at INRS (Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique). We anticipate another great IGARSS.
The November AdCom meeting in Newark, New Jersey, focused on Strategic Planning. The discussion, led
by Executive VP Kamal Sarabandi, emphasized Education, Globalization, and increased engagement of Industry and international space agencies with GRSS. Investments in new initiatives in 2014 will include support
of educational workshops in Latin America, increased
support for membership and chapter development, and
sponsorship of Technical Committee projects. I look
forward to working with Kamal and the other Vice Presidents for 2014: Wooil Moon (Professional Activities),
John Kerekes (Technical Activities), Adriano Camps
(Meetings and Symposia), Bill Emery (Publications),
and Steve Reising (Information Resources). Please do
not hesitate to contact any of us with suggestions concerning Society activities.
We are all looking forward to an exciting 2014 for
GRSS and our profession.
Best Regards,
Melba Crawford
President, IEEE GRSS
[email protected]
_______________
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GRS
MARCH 2014
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6
th
Workshop on Hyperspectral Image and Signal Processing :
Evolution in Remote Sensing
2014
www.ieee-whispers.com
[email protected]
______________________________
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GLOBE—© CARTESIA, PLANE—©1995 EXPERT SOFTWARE, INC.,
SATELLITE—WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/RICHARD-59
UAS-Based Radar Sounding
of the Polar Ice Sheets
C. LEUSCHEN, R. HALE, S. KESHMIRI, J.B. YAN, F. RODRIGUEZ-MORALES,
A. MAHMOOD, AND S. GOGINENI
Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets, University of Kansas,
Lawrence, Kansas, United States
Abstract—Both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets
are currently losing mass and contributing to global sea
level rise. To predict the response of these ice sheets to a
warming climate, ice-sheet models must be improved by
incorporating information on the bed topography and
basal conditions of fast-flowing glaciers near their grounding lines. High-sensitivity, low-frequency radars with 2-D
aperture synthesis capability are needed to sound and image
fast-flowing glaciers with very rough surfaces and ice that
contains inclusions. In response to this need, CReSIS developed an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) equipped with
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2168-6831/14/$31.00©2014IEEE
a dual-frequency radar that operates at approximately 14
and 35 MHz. The radar transmits 100-W peak power at a
pulse repetition frequency of 10 kHz, operates from 20 W
of DC power, and weighs approximately 2 kg. The UAS has
a take-off weight of about 38.5 kg and a range of approximately 100 km per gallon of fuel. We recently completed
several successful test flights of the UAS equipped with the
dual-frequency radar at a field camp in Antarctica. The radar
measurements performed as a part of these test flights represent the first-ever successful sounding of glacial ice with a
UAS-based radar. We also collected data for synthesizing a
2-D aperture, which is required to prevent off-vertical scatter, caused by the rough surfaces of fast-flowing glaciers,
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from masking bed echoes. In this article, we provide a brief
overview of the need for radar soundings of fast-flowing glaciers at low-frequencies and a brief description of the UAS
and radar. We also discuss our field operations and provide
sample results from data collected in Antarctica. Finally, we
present our future plans, which include miniaturizing the
radar and collecting measurements in Greenland.
1. INTRODUCTION
urrent satellite observations indicate that the Earth’s
polar regions are undergoing significant changes,
including the decrease of sea ice extent and thickness
in the Arctic [1] and the thinning of the margins of the
Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Recently, Shepherd
et al. [2] analyzed data from multiple satellite missions
and reported that mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet
increased from about 72 Gt/yr during 1993–1995—a 0.2
mm/year contribution to sea level rise—to about 344 Gt/
yr during 2005–2010—a 0.9 mm/year contribution to
sea level rise. They also indicated that both the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are losing mass. These large
ice sheets contain enough fresh water to raise sea level by
about 66 meters if they were to melt completely. While
complete melting and disintegration are unlikely in the
immediate future, their thinning and retreat are already
contributing to an accelerated rise in sea level. This sea
level rise will have a strong impact on heavily populated
coastal regions [3].
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) reported that the global average sea level would
rise between 26 and 98 cm by the end of this century [4].
However, the upper bound reported by the IPCC is widely
debated, as estimates using empirical models show that
it could be as large as 2 m. Significant progress has been
made in the development of models that incorporate the
full stress tensor and use updated bed topography maps
of both ice sheets [5–7], but substantial uncertainty still
surrounds the upper limit of projected sea-level rise. The
large range and subsequent disagreement can be partly
attributed to a lack of fine-resolution bed topography
for fast-flowing glaciers, particularly near their grounding lines. These fast-flowing outlet glaciers, which are
only few kilometers wide and yet carry vast reservoirs of
ice into the ocean, are poorly represented in the current
ice-bed maps and ice-sheet models. There is therefore an
urgent need to measure the ice thickness of fast-flowing
glaciers with fine resolution to determine bed topography and basal conditions. This information will, in turn,
be used to improve ice-sheet models and generate accurate estimates of sea level rise in a warming climate. Without proper representation of these fast-flowing glaciers,
advancements in ice-sheet modeling will remain elusive.
Unfortunately, radar sounding and imaging of outlet
glaciers near their grounding lines and calving fronts are
extremely challenging tasks, because off-vertical rough
C
MARCH 2014
surface scatter and volume scatter from inclusions in the
ice can mask weak ice-bed echoes. The weak echoes are a
result of much higher than normal attenuation of radar
signals propagating through the ice due to the presence of
warm ice near the bed. For this reason, high-sensitivity,
low-frequency radars with 2-D aperture synthesis capability are required for ice-thickness measurements over
fast-flowing glaciers. The low frequencies are required to
reduce volume scatter from ice inclusions, and the radars
must be capable of 2-D aperture synthesis to obtain narrow antenna beams with low sidelobes, which prevents
both along- and across-track surface scatter from masking weak ice-bed returns. A narrow-antenna beam can
be generated in the along-track direction with traditional
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) techniques; however, it is
extremely difficult to accommodate a large, low-frequency
antenna array, even on aircraft like the NASA P-3 [8]. For
this reason, we developed a small Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) that can be flown over closely-spaced lines in
the cross-track direction to synthesize a large aperture. We
developed the UAS with a radar operating at 14 and 35
MHz for measurements over the ice sheets in Antarctica
and Greenland. The fully instrumented UAS weighs about
38.5 kg with a range of 100 km for about one gallon of fuel.
The antennas for operating the radar at either 14 MHz with
about 1 MHz of bandwidth or 35 MHz with about 4 MHz
of bandwidth are integrated into the wings and airframe of
the UAS. The radar transmits 100-W peak power signals at
a pulse repetition frequency of 10 kHz. The radar weighs
approximately 2 kg and operates with about 20 W of DC
power. We flight tested the radar-equipped UAS at the Subglacial Lake Whillans (SLW) field camp on the Whillans
Ice Stream in Antarctica and accomplished the first successful sounding of ice with a radar on a UAS.
In this paper, we provide a brief overview of the UAS,
its radar system, experimental results from the field, and
our future plans to miniaturize the radar and collect data
over fast-flowing glaciers.
2. BACKGROUND
Radars operating over a frequency range of about 1 MHz
to 1000 MHz have been used to sound glacial ice for
decades [9]. The application of radars to ice sounding can
be considered to have started with the pioneering work of
Amory Waite. He conducted experiments to measure ice
thickness with a radar altimeter operating at 440 MHz on
the Ross Ice shelf in the late 1950s [10–11]. Waite is also
credited with conducting the first airborne ice measurements in the early 1960s. Following his pioneering work,
the glaciological application of radars was expanded
through significant contributions by Evans and his colleagues at the Scott Polar Research Institute in the UK
[12–14] and Gudmandsen and his colleagues at the Technical University of Denmark [15]. Now, radar has become
an invaluable tool in the study of ice sheets and glaciers.
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FIGURE 1. G1X UAS on approach to land at SLW site in Antarctica.
Radars have been used to sound ice, map both deep and
near-surface internal layers, and image the ice-bed interface with fine resolution.
Most of the radars used for sounding ice during the
1960s and 1970s were incoherent. A few attempts were
made to develop coherent radars for sounding ice in 1970s
with very limited success because of the lack of suitable
inexpensive technologies [16]. The first solid-state coherent radar sounder was developed at the University of Kansas in the late 1980s [17]. It was redesigned, upgraded,
and widely used for measurements over the Greenland
ice sheet as a part of NASA’s Program of Arctic Assessment (PARCA) initiative [18–21]. Following the successful demonstration of a fully coherent low-power radar for
sounding ice sheets, coherent radars were developed by
TABLE 1. G1X TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS.
PARAMETER
VALUE
UNITS
DIMENSIONS/GEOMETRY
Length
2.84
m
Height
1.11
m
Area
2.06
m2
Span
5.29
m
Aspect ratio
11.75
n.d.
WING
POWER PLANT
Engine
Desert Aircraft 100 cc
Max power
7060
W
WEIGHTS
Fuel
2.72
kg
Payload
9.07
kg
Empty
26.76
kg
Max takeoff
38.55
kg
PERFORMANCE
10
Cruise speed
28
m/s
Range
100
km
Endurance
60
min
Takeoff/landing distance
90
m
other groups and are currently used for measurements
over the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets [22–23].
At the University of Kansas, we developed radars with
4–15 element cross-track arrays and multiple receivers for
airborne and surface-based measurements [8, 21]. These
radars include synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and array
processing capabilities [8, 23] and have been successfully
used to demonstrate 3-D imaging of ice sheets [24–26].
These systems have also been used to sound several challenging areas of the ice sheets, including outlet glaciers
and ice sheet margins [27–28], as well as for high-altitude
measurements from long-range aircraft [29]. However, as
mentioned previously, the performance of radars operating at frequencies of 50 MHz or higher severely degrades
over fast-flowing glaciers due to rough surface scatter
and volume scatter. A few attempts have been made to
develop coherent airborne HF radars operating at frequencies as low as 1 MHz and as high as 30 MHz [30–35]
for sounding glaciers with temperate ice; these have been
shown to be effective in sounding temperate ice under
favorable conditions. Normally, low-frequency radars
are operated with long, resistively-loaded wire antennas
trailing behind the aircraft. Although SAR processing can
be used to reduce beamwidth in the along-track direction, the large beamwidth of trailing long-wire antenna
in the cross-track direction results in significant reflections from the walls of the glaciers, which degrades radar
performance. A UAS equipped with low-frequency radars
that can be flown over closely-spaced lines—as close as
5 m at 14 MHz—in the cross-track direction for synthesizing a 2-D aperture is needed to sound fast-flowing glaciers with fine resolution.
3. PLATFORM OVERVIEW
The G1X unmanned aerial system (UAS) is a mid-wing,
semi-autonomous, high-aspect ratio aircraft that has
been modified by the University of Kansas specifically
for scientific missions throughout the cryosphere. The
G1X UAS platform has a 5.3 m wingspan, 2.84 m fuselage length, and weighs approximately 38.5 kg when fully
instrumented and fueled. When operating at a cruise
speed of 28 m/s, the platform has a range of about 100 km
for approximately one gallon of fuel. Additional range
and endurance can be enabled with a supplemental fuel
tank. The aircraft can be configured with either wheels or
skis; recent field trials in Antarctica were all on skis. Takeoff and landing performance is verified at 90 m or less.
Figure 1 shows a photograph of the G1X on approach to
land at the SLW snow runway in West Antarctica. Table 1
shows the G1X’s technical and performance information.
The integration of HF/VHF antennas for operating the
radar on a small UAS drove aircraft requirements. The
antenna’s physical length requirement demanded a relatively high-aspect ratio and wing span (Table 1). Winglets
were used to improve the stability characteristics of the
aircraft. The physics-based model, pilot rating, and system
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identification analysis all showed that the G1X UAS satisfies every Level I handling quality requirement.
The G1X is piloted by the Supplemental Pilot on takeoff,
landing, and in the vicinity of the runway in the third person or external pilot mode using a line-of-sight S-band communication link. Optionally, the G1X is commanded by the
Pilot Operator using the WePilot-2000 autopilot through
the implementation of GPS-based state estimations. The
airborne WePilot communicates with the WePilot Ground
Station via a UHF telemetry transceiver and an Iridium
satellite link. Communication with the science payload is
enabled through a supplemental UHF telemetry link to provide control, status, and quick-look results. The aircraft is
equipped with a Guardian-3 Iridium Automated Flight Following (AFF) system, which transmits in the L band. This
GPS-based system transmits position, altitude, bearing, and
speed every two minutes in compliance with USDA AFF
requirements. The information is transmitted to USDA-AFF
to enable continuous tracking of the aircraft.
The G1X’s successful maiden flight took place during
summer 2013 at Fort Riley Army Base, Kansas. This flight
was fully manual with the pilot in the loop and was used to
assess and verify aircraft stability and handling qualities.
4. SYSTEM OVERVIEW
In this section, we present an overview of the radar electronics and the antenna structures used with the G1X
UAS. As mentioned in the introduction, the radar operates at center frequencies in the vicinity of 14 MHz (lower
band, HF) and 35 MHz (upper band, VHF) with bandwidths of 1 MHz and 4 MHz, respectively. We selected
these radar center frequencies to satisfy two requirements: (1) the antennas should be integrated into the
UAS wings and airframe; and (2) the system should be
capable of sounding ice in fast-flowing glaciers. We chose
14 MHz because of the success Arcone and his colleagues
[36–37] had in sounding glaciers with temperate ice in
Alaska with a 12-MHz impulse radar. Similarly, we chose
35 MHz because of the success Blindow and his colleagues [34–35] reported in sounding temperate ice in
Patagonia with a 30-MHz impulse radar. The 35-MHz
radar improves upon the performance of the 30-MHz
impulse radar by providing fine resolution and better
range (ice thickness) measurement accuracy due to its
wider bandwidth. Likewise, the 14-MHz radar offers better performance than the 12-MHz impulse radar in areas
with significant volume debris. The additional attenuation (dB/m) due to volume debris can be modeled by a
complex effective permittivity [38] where the imaginary
part scales by frequency cubed, and the volume clutter
due to Rayleigh backscatter scales by frequency to the
fourth power. For a simple scenario of 800 m-thick ice
and meter scale spherical water inclusions at a volume
fraction of 2 percent, the additional attenuation of the
bed response due to these inclusions would be approximately 30 dB at 35 MHz and negligible at 14 MHz.
MARCH 2014
However, the imaginary part of the dielectric constant
associated with the conduction component is higher at
14 MHz than at 35 MHz, as it is inversely proportional
to frequency. The trade-off is the difficulty in integrating
the 14 MHz antennas on a small platform. We used electrically short antennas with matching networks to obtain
a good impedance match and adequate efficiency. This
limited the bandwidth to about 1 MHz at the lower band
and 4 MHz at the upper band. The frequencies of operation within each band are fully adjustable to match the
optimal response of the antennas. For the radar electronics, we have employed both off-the-shelf and customdesigned components developed primarily from wireless
communications and ultrasound imaging technologies.
Range resolution determines the radar’s performance in resolving targets located at different ranges. It
is inversely proportional to radar bandwidth, B, and can
expressed as t = c/2B f r , where c is the speed of wave
propagation in free space and f r is the relative permittivity of the propagation media, assumed to be equal to
3.15 for solid ice. For the operating bandwidths reported
with the newly developed radar, the range resolution for
the radar is estimated to be close to 85 m at the lower
band (using 1 MHz of bandwidth) and close to 21 m at
the upper band (using 4 MHz of bandwidth). The range
measurement uncertainty, on the other hand, is inversely
proportional to both bandwidth and the square root of
the signal-to-noise ratio and is given by dr = k _ t/ S/N l i,
where k = a constant determined by the pulse shape and
S/N is the signal-to-noise ratio. An isolated bed return
with an S/N ratio of 18 dB or better can be measured with
an uncertainty of about 10 m for both bands.
The range resolution at the upper band is comparable
to that of the airborne system flown on board the NASA
DC-8, which was estimated to be close to 18 m for a bandwidth of 9.5 MHz and accounted for the effect of a timedomain window applied to the signal to reduce range sidelobes [8, 29]. While the expected range resolution at the
lower band (14 MHz) may seem coarse, it is important
to consider, as mentioned earlier, that operation in this
band is intended to fill the gaps where the VHF systems
fail due to high volume scattering. The performance of
the radar operating at the lower band is considered adequate to sound ice thicknesses ranging from a few hundred meters to 2 km in such areas.
4.1. RADAR SYSTEM
The radar consists of three main sections: (1) DC power
conditioning and distribution; (2) digital; and (3) radio
frequency (RF). A simplified block diagram of the radar is
shown in Figure 2. The DC power conditioning and distribution section is composed of a passive electromagnetic
interference (EMI) filter combined with a series of highreliability DC-DC converter and regulators modules.
The digital section was implemented with a field programmable gate array (FPGA) development kit, a high-speed
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28 VDC
T/R Antenna
speed serial connection
to the on-board autopilot,
which, in turn, communiMatching
Passive
Control
RF-Section
cates with the ground staEMI Filter
Network
(High-Power)
tion using a 900 MHz link.
Band-Select
The digital section can be
Power HPF
Limiter Switch
DC-DC
Amplifier
configured to function as a
Converter 1
vector network analyzer for
Control
(28 V–28 V)
in-flight impedance meaDuplexer
surements of the antennas.
DC-DC
Converter 2
The RF section is divided
(28 V–7.5 V)
into
two sub-sections: lowDriver BPF
Amplifier
power and high-power. The
Voltage
low-power RF subsection
BPF VGA LNA
RF Section
Regulator
(Low-Power)
includes a driver amplifier
(7.5 V–5.0 V)
and filters to condition the
Power
transmit signal from the
Waveform
Conditioning
Generator
digital waveform generaClock
and Distribution
ADC1
tor and two-receiver chanDistribution
Master
Data
nels, each composed of a
Clock
Acquisition
ADC2
low-noise amplifier in casSystem
cade with a variable-gain
900-MHz Link:
amplifier and an anti-aliasUTC
Time/1PPS
Status/Control/ GPS
Digital Section
Quick-Look
ing filter. The high-power
RF subsection includes a
duplexer circuit for transFIGURE 2. Simplified block diagram of the radar.
mit/receive (T/R) operations
and a single, high-efficiency pulsed power amplifier built
Analog-to-Digital/Digital-to-Analog (AD/DA) card, and
with GaN transistors. A high-power, high-pass filter and
other peripherals. The section includes a digital waveform
a low-power, single-pole double-throw (SPDT) switch are
generator with full control over the frequency and envelope
likewise included in this sub-section. The high-pass filter is
of the transmit signal. This allows the transmitter signal
placed in front of the power amplifier to eliminate low-frefrequency and bandwidth to be adjusted to match antenna
quency transients from power amplifier switching, while
characteristics, as was done during the field experiment in
the low-power SPDT switch is placed at the receive port of
Antarctica; this is discussed in the next section.
the duplexer to select between the 14 MHz and 35 MHz
A Hanning window is typically used as the pulse envereceiver channels in the low RF power subsection. A sumlope function. The digital section also includes two sepamary of relevant radar parameters is included in Table 2.
rate digitizer channels capable of sampling at 50 MSPS.
The radar is housed in a box with dimensions of
Each channel is dedicated to one of the two bands of
20.3 cm # 15.2 cm # 13.2 cm. The radar electronnics are
operation. Multiple digital lines are available as control
stacked vertically with the DC power conditioning seclines for the RF circuitry. The raw radar data are streamed
tion at the bottom, the digital section and low-power RF
to an on-board high-capacity SD card. Command, stasubsection in the middle, and the high-power RF subsectus, and data snapshots are transmitted through a lowtion at the top. Figure 3 shows a photograph of the assembled radar with the top cover removed.
Avionics
TABLE 2. RADAR PARAMETERS.
12
PARAMETER
VALUE (TYP.)
Operating frequency (lower/upper)
14 MHz/35 MHz
Bandwidth (lower/upper)
1 MHz/4 MHz
Transmit power (peak)
100 W
Estimated peak radiated power
a45 W/77 W
Pulse duration
1 ns (adjustable)
Pulse repetition freq.
10–20 kHz (adjustable)
Sampling frequency
50 MHz
Weight /volume
a2 kg/0.0041 m3
DC power consumption
a20 W (using 28 VDC)
4.2. ANTENNA STRUCTURES
The G1X carries two separate antennas integrated onto its
wings and airframe, as shown in Figure 4. The 14 MHz
structure is a resistively-loaded dipole implemented with
copper tape and removable wires that run around the
perimeter of the airframe. The 35-MHz antenna is a tapered
planar dipole implemented with copper tape. Both antennas are fed using ferrite baluns. Prior to system integration
(as shown in Figure 4a), both antennas can operate simultaneously at their respective frequencies as they both have a
natural resonance at their design frequencies. The simulated
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10 X (Resistive Load)
20.3 cm
Feed
15.2 cm
14 MHz
Antenna (Red)
13.2 cm
35 MHz
Antenna (Orange)
Removable Wire
(a)
Avionics/Radar
Carbon Fiber Spars
FIGURE 3. Photograph of the radar electronics.
5. FIELD OPERATIONS
Test flights and data collection with the radar-equipped
UAS, including airborne and surface-based measurements, were carried out as a part of ongoing research at
CReSIS during the 2013–2014 field season. The airborne
program included two components: (1) multi-frequency
radars on BT-67 aircraft over the grounding lines of
Whillans and Bindschadler ice streams on the Siple Coast
of West Antarctica; and (2) UAS flight tests and data collection with the UAS-based dual-frequency radar over
Sub-glacial Lake Whillans (SLW) and the WISSARD drill
site. The surface-based program included measurements
with the dual-frequency UAS radar from a sled to verify its
functionality and measurements with a wideband radar
operating over the frequency range of 600–900 MHz to
better estimate the bottom melt rates of ice shelves. The
graphic in Figure 6 illustrates the concept of our airborne
program, as well as the field camp.
MARCH 2014
(b)
FIGURE 4. HF/VHF radar antennas implemented on the G1X platform
(a) before system integration and (b) after system integration.
0
-5
KS11K (dB)
return loss before integration was obtained using a High
Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS) from ANSYS, shown
in gray in Figure 5. After system integration, we configured
the radar to perform in-flight antenna impedance measurements in the field, and the results are given in red in
Figure 5. Performance degradation was observed for both
antennas due to the close proximity of the servo wires and
other conductive objects. To compensate for the frequency
shift and maximize the antenna bandwidth, two impedance
matching networks were designed, optimized, and built in
the field using the in-flight measured impedance data. With
the added impedance matching networks, we have verified
the antenna performance with another in-flight measurement; the result is given in Figure 5 (green line). A 10-dB
return loss bandwidth of 1 MHz is obtained at the lower
band and a bandwidth of 4 MHz is obtained at the upper
band. These results are in agreement with a feasibility study
performed before the field experiment.
Servo Wires
-10
-15
-20
14 MHz Antenna
-25
-30
10
35 MHz Antenna
15
20
25
30
35
Frequency (MHz)
40
45
In Flight Radar Meas. (w/o MN)
HFSS Sim. (After System Int.)
HFSS Sim. (Before System Int.)
In Flight Radar Meas. (w/ MN)
FIGURE 5. In-flight measured and simulated return loss of the radar
antennas for different operating conditions.
In terms of the UAS mission, we have repeated the initial flight test in the field to ensure all flight-critical systems were functioning properly in local conditions. Phase
I field testing began with line-of-sight flight tests and
included additional flight tests to assess and verify communications, control the transition between manual and
autonomous flight, and assess and verify radar antenna
performance and functionality. Phase II flight tests were
autonomous, included over-the-horizon flight functionality, and focused on improving ground track accuracy of
the aircraft flight path and enhancing the performance of
both the HF and VHF sounders. The G1X UAS was flown
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0
Iridium
Satellites
BT-67
Delay (ns)
GPS Satellites
0
-5
2
-10
4
-15
-20
6
-25
8
-30
10
-35
-40
G1X
Camp
12
Sled
14
-45
-1
-0.5
0
0.5
Easting (km)
1
-50
(a)
FIGURE 6. Field site location and operations in West Antarctica with
airborne and surface measurements.
14
Bed Reflectivity (dB)
Northing (km)
6. FIELD RESULTS
Multiple UAS/radar measurements were made during the
field deployment to the SLW camp. Prior to radar testing,
we performed return loss measurements of both antennas using a hand-held network analyzer to determine the
center frequency and pulse width settings for the radar
and arbitrary waveform generator. Based on these results,
the radar was operated at 13.5 MHz and 35 MHz, slightly
different than the originally planned 14 and 35 MHz.
Next, we conducted initial tests of the HF radar on the
UAS by mounting the UAS on a Nansen-sled and towing
the sled behind a snowmobile. We performed a multiplepass survey of the ice runway at 13.5 MHz along 11 tracks,
each spaced by approximately 5 meters. The primary
objectives of this survey were to: (1) verify the operation
of the system; and (2) determine the amplitude and phase
coherence across multiple tracks to enable synthetic aperture radar (SAR) processing to improve overall system
sensitivity. Figure 7a shows an echogram of a single pass
along the runway. The flat reflector occurring at approximately 10 ns is the ice-bedrock interface and corresponds
to an ice thickness of about 800 m, which is confirmed
by previous measurements in the area. Figure 7b shows
the phase response of the bed-reflection mapped along
all survey lines. The 360 degree phase change across the
surveyed portion of the runway indicates a change in ice
thickness of approximately 6.5 meters. It is difficult to
interpret the phase and amplitude coherence in Figure 7b,
so an expanded section is provided in Figure 7c and 7d to
show fading of both the amplitude and phase, respectively,
along the survey lines. These results show excellent coherence in the fading response across multiple survey lines.
(b)
0.01
0
-0.01
-0.02
-0.03
-0.04
-10
-20
-30
0.27
0.29
0.31
0.33
0.35
0.37
Easting (km)
(c)
Bed Phase (radians)
Northing (km)
14 times at the SLW field camp. In all flights, the aircraft was instrumented with the dual-frequency HF/VHF
radar. Seven of those flights were autonomous, including
an over-the-horizon flight.
3
0.01
0
-0.01
-0.02
-0.03
-0.04
0
0.27
0.29
0.31
0.33
0.35
0.37
-3
Easting (km)
(d)
FIGURE 7. Results from an 11-pass sled survey of the ice runway at
SLW camp. (a) Echogram of a single pass. (b) Phase of the bed reflection on all passes. Expanded (c) amplitude and (d) phase of the bed
reflection to show coherence across multiple ground tracks.
We started flight operations after verifying system
performance on the ground. Airborne activities included
in-flight return loss antenna characterization; multiplepass runway surveys operated in a remote controlled (RC)
configuration; multiple-pass, fully autonomous, line-ofsight surveys of the runway; and finally a fully autonomous, over-the-horizon survey of the SLW WISSARD drill
site. We performed in-flight return loss measurements by
configuring the radar with a directional coupler to perform measurements of the scattering parameter S 11 . This
was done by first calibrating the set-up using standard
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0
2
-10
4
-20
6
-30
One Loop
8
-40
10
12
-50
14
-60
0
0.5
1
1.5
Distance (km)
2
2
-10
4
-20
6
-30
8
-40
10
-50
12
14
0
(a)
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
Distance (km)
-4
-84.210
Latitude
-8
-84.211
-84.212
-4
-84.21
-12
-6
-16
-154.54
-154.5
-154.46
-20
Latitude
-84.213
-154.58
Longitude
(b)
-8
-84.22
-10
-12
-84.23
-14
Surface Clutter (dB)
-84.209
-49
-84.210
Latitude
-51
-84.211
-53
-84.212
-84.213
-154.58
-55
-154.54
-154.5
-60
(a)
-84.209
-154.46
-57
Longitude
(c)
FIGURE 8. Results from the manual remote controlled survey of the
ice runway. (a) Echogram showing take-off and the first few loops.
(b) Bed reflectivity over all survey loops. (c) Integrated power
between 4 and 8 ns to indicate variations in surface clutter.
terminations (open, short, and 50-Ohm load) and finally
measuring the antenna impedance during flight. Additionally, the 900 MHz communication link provided a
real-time, quick-look display of radar a-scopes to verify
operation during flight. This feature has been tested during over-the-horizon operations at ranges up to 11.2 km.
Figure 8a shows an echogram of the first few runway
passes at 35 MHz when the system was operating in remote
control mode. The radar started collecting data on the
ground prior to take-off, and as a result the location of the
bed reflection transitions from 10 ns to 11 ns as the aircraft
gains altitude. Figure 8b shows the bed reflection amplitude mapped onto the flight track during the 15 passes.
The amplitude decreases due to the antenna pattern effect,
which is caused by the aircraft rolling during turns. The
results show that amplitude variations are strongly correMARCH 2014
0
0
Delay (ns)
Delay (ns)
0
-16
-84.24
-154.5
-154.2 -153.9
Longitude
(b)
-153.6
-18
FIGURE 9. Results from the autonomous over-the-horizon survey of
the WISSARD drill site. (a) Echogram showing takeoff, survey, and
landing. (b) Bed reflectivity with expanded section of the survey loops.
lated between multiple passes. Although it may not initially
be apparent in the data, there is a significant amount of surface clutter due to the wide radiation pattern of the dipoleantenna illuminating the surface. To show how the antenna
pattern can modulate this clutter, Figure 8c shows the incoherently averaged power between 4 and 8 ns mapped into
latitude and longitude, similar to the reflectivity map in
Figure 8b. The image clearly shows that the clutter power
changes when the broad side of the dipole antenna rotates
off nadir as the platform rolls during sharper turns. We
will process these multi-pass data to synthesize a crosstrack antenna beam with low sidelobes to demonstrate the
reduction of surface clutter in the next few months.
Finally, Figure 9a shows an echogram of data collected
during the fully autonomous over-the-horizon flight to the
WISSARD drill site, and Figure 9b shows the bed reflection
amplitude during the survey. The measured ice thickness of
about 800 m agrees with previously reported results. Again,
we observe a strong correlation of echoes between multiple
passes, indicating 2-D aperture synthesis is realizable.
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The tests performed and data collected during the
field deployment, including results generated in the
field, demonstrate a strong potential for the integrated
system to collect data over fast-flowing glaciers. We successfully performed an over-the-horizon survey consisting of four closely-spaced tracks, which demonstrated
the platform’s capability to collect data in a manner
that allows for the application of array processing techniques across several flight lines. The ground-based survey showed consistent phase and amplitude coherence
across multiple tracks, further indicating the capability
for the application of array processing. Finally, the radar
demonstrated the capability to collect sounding data and
detect bedrock with high SNR from a small UAV at both
14 and 35 MHz.
7. CONCLUSION
We developed a small UAS integrated with a compact,
light-weight low-frequency radar for measurements over
rapidly changing areas of the Greenland and Antarctic
ice sheets. The integrated system was successfully flight
tested in West Antarctica. We sounded ice with a UASbased radar for the first time and collected data over a
grid with closely spaced lines to demonstrate the 2-D
SAR processing needed to reduce surface scatter from the
extremely rough surfaces typical of fast-flowing glaciers.
It extremely difficult (nearly impossible) to collect
data with manned aircraft over a closely-spaced grid for
determining bed topography with a resolution of about
100–200 m for 5–7 km wide glaciers. Fine-resolution bed
topography is required to model ice dynamics near the
grounding lines of fast-flowing glaciers [39–40]. A small
UAS equipped with radar and GPS receivers is extremely
well-suited for this application. Additionally, a small UAS
can be used to collect data over closely-spaced lines, as
close as approximately 5 m, in the cross-track direction
for synthesizing a narrow antenna beam for reducing surface clutter. A small UAS also uses several orders of magnitude less fuel per hour than the traditional manned
aircraft used today for ice sounding. In remote locations,
such as Antarctica, the cost associated with transporting
and caching fuel is very high.
Our future plans include processing and analyzing
data collected during this field season, miniaturizing
the radar further and reducing its weight to 1.5 kg or
less, and increasing the peak transmit power to about
300 W. Over the next few months, we plan to perform
additional test flights in Kansas to further evaluate the
avionics and flight control systems, as well as to measure
in-flight impedance of the antennas. We will use the measured antenna impedances in-flight to design optimized
matching networks to extend the radar bandwidth. During the 2014 or 2015 field seasons, we are planning to
deploy the UAS to Greenland to collect data over areas
with extremely rough surfaces and fast-flowing glaciers,
such as Jakobshavn.
16
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was completed at the University of Kansas with
funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF)
Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheet (CReSIS) grant
ANT-0424589 and with matching grants from the State of
Kansas. The authors would like to acknowledge ANSYS for
providing a dedicated HFSS license used for the antenna
modeling and optimization in the field. We would also
like to acknowledge the support of many on the CReSIS
team, including but not limited to J. Fuller, L. Metz, and
P. Place for design and assembly of electronic parts; B.
Camps-Raga for component design and electronic testing
support; A. Paden and S. Vincent for designing and fabricating the housing for the electronics; A. Bowman, T.J.
Stastny, M. Ewing for avionics integration and UAS flight
test support; and J. Hunter for UAS structure support. We
would also like to thank Ms. J. Collins for editing and
formatting the article. Finally, we acknowledge the work
of Ms. E. Post in creating several graphics.
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GRS
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TECHNICAL COMMITTEES
ANDREAS MUELLER (Chair), German Aerospace Centre (DLR)
KARL STAENZ (Former Chair), Alberta Terrestrial Imaging Centre, University of Lethbridge
CINDY ONG (Co-Chair), Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Organization (CSIRO)
UTA HEIDEN (Co-Chair), German Aerospace Centre (DLR)
International Spaceborne Imaging
Spectroscopy (ISIS) Technical Committee
Technical Committee Corner
by John Kerekes, Vice President of
Technical Activities
Each issue we feature one of our
Technical Committees to share with
the communit y their mission,
objectives, and activities. Here we
present a contribution from the
International Spaceborne Imaging
Spec troscopy (ISIS) Technical
Committee. ISIS functions as a virtual meeting place for the
international hyperspectral imaging satellite community. Please
contact the Chair or Co-Chairs if you have an interest in participating in this Technical Committee.
I. INTRODUCTION
he International Spaceborne Imaging Spectroscopy
Technical Committee (ISIS TC) of IEEE GRSS provides a forum for technical and programmatic discussion and consultation among national space agencies,
research institutions and other stakeholders in land
surface and coastal zone oriented imaging spectroscopy.
The main goal of the ISIS TC is to share information on current and future spaceborne imaging spectroscopy (hyperspectral) missions with a focus on
land surface and coastal zone research. The group
intends to foster the discussion between geo-scientific
research groups, technology oriented and institutional Earth observation stakeholders. It seeks opportunities for new international partnerships to the
benefit of the global user community. Specific discussions within the working group also focus on interoperability among missions, ‘best practice’ mission
implementation, mass data management challenges
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and development of a forward work plan for improved
coordination amongst member agencies.
ISIS, formed in 2007 in Hilo, was initiated by Alex
Held from CSIRO and established as a Technical Committee of IEEE GRSS in 2010. As ISIS strongly encourages interactive discussions and constantly seeks feedback from the international community, the goals and
objectives of ISIS are regularly reviewed and updated
whenever desirable. Currently the following goals and
objectives of ISIS have been formulated:
◗ Provide a platform to mission operators to share
information and establish data acquisition strategies;
◗ Exploit the possibilities for coordinated mission operations in the form of a “virtual satellite constellation”;
◗ Promote the need for more efficient data delivery to
processing facilities (at key global centres or to incountry institutions);
◗ Support the establishment of common data analysis protocols and a set of geoscientific products and
common data standards;
◗ Promote the generation of a pool of hyperspectral
satellite data to be used in round robin experiments;
◗ Support coordinated vicarious calibration and product validation activities with linkages to the airborne
remote sensing community;
◗ Promote the need for robust, underpinning R&D
programs for continuous improvement.
In the first years of ISIS, membership mostly consisted of agency members involved in the development
of spaceborne imaging spectroscopy missions and data
processing experts from research groups working with
airborne hyperspectral sensors. Discussions mainly
focused on technical issues, calibration and validation
needs and processing standards. These topics will also
form the backbone of the TC in the future. However, it
is also intended to establish contacts to larger scientific
research programs and initiatives to demonstrate the
added value of imaging spectroscopy derived products.
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2. ACTIVITIES IN 2013
ISIS conducts regular meetings once a year at IGARSS
and organizes sessions on topics relevant to spaceborne
imaging spectroscopy missions, such as mission updates,
sensor calibration and data management, at these symposia. The following list gives a broad overview of the TC’s
activities to reach its goals of improved coordination:
◗ Keep a ‘watching brief ’ and sharing information among
space agencies and users on status of current and proposed imaging spectroscopy (hyperspectral) satellite
missions;
◗ Provide an open forum for dialogue at least once a year,
among key space agencies, to establish data acquisition
strategies involving a “virtual satellite constellation”
philosophy;
◗ Raise awareness among agencies on the need for more
efficient data delivery to processing facilities;
◗ Encourage data providers to make a small number of core
hyperspectral satellite data sets publicly available for the
development of algorithms and information products;
◗ Convene meetings to discuss common data analysis
protocols and a small set of ‘core products’; and
◗ Organize sessions on calibration and product validation
activities.
In April 2013 ISIS was presented at the EARSeL Special
Interest Group Imaging Spectroscopy Workshop in Nantes,
France including an update on upcoming missions.
An overview of current and future terrestrial spacebased civilian imaging spectroscopy missions is given in
the next section based on the ISIS session on ‘Spaceborne
Imaging Spectroscopy Missions—Current and Future
Activities’ held at IGARSS 2013 in Melbourne, Australia.
The session compiled 10 presentations including updates
on most of the missions currently in preparation or in the
planning phase (Table 1).
Summarizing the invited session, it can be stated that
a considerable number of initiatives currently exist in
Europe ranging from Phase A studies in France (HYPXIM)
and Israel (SHALOM) to missions already in the manufacturing phase in Germany (EnMAP) and Italy (PRISMA).
ESA, although not actively involved in a future imaging
spectrometer mission, has substantially contributed to
the positive development in Europe by supporting the
development of key technologies in spectroscopy for
more than two decades and is intending to continue to do
so in the future. In Japan, the HISUI mission team is also
in phase D and in parallel to the space segment development prepares calibration and validation strategies.
YSICS, although not developed for terrestrial applications, certainly will greatly improve the absolute radiometric accuracy of spectral measurements. Despite the
fact that most of the discussed missions face issues with
respect to their time schedule, it can be noted that none of
them is compromising on the required spectral or radiometric performance. This fact is well recognized and
strongly supported by the ISIS TC.
MARCH 2014
TABLE 1. LIST OF PRESENTATIONS IN TH1.T11:
SPACEBORNE IMAGING SPECTROSCOPY MISSIONS—
CURRENT AND FUTURE ACTIVITIES.
K. Staenz; University of
Lethbridge, A. Mueller;
U. Heiden; German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Overview of Terrestrial Imaging
Spectroscopy Missions
Jean-Loup Bézy et al.; ESA
ESA’s Hyperspectral Missions
Stefano Pignatti; IMAACNR, et al.
The Prisma Hyperspectral Mission:
Science Activities and Opportunities for Agriculture and Land
Monitoring
Véronique Carrere; Université de Nantes, et al
The French Earth Observation Science/Defence Mission Hypxim—
A Second Generation High
Spectral and Spatial Resolution
Imaging Spectrometer
Shen-En Qian, et al.;
Canadian Space Agency
Development of Canadian
Hyperspectral Imager Onboard
Micro-Satellites
Uta Heiden, DLR,
Hermann Kaufmann,
GFZ, et al.
The Environmental Mapping and
Analysis Program (EnMAP)—Present Status of Preparatory Phase
Tsuneo Matsunaga;
Current Status of Hyperspectral
National Institute for Envi- Imager Suite (HISUI)
ronmental Studies et al.
Eyal Bend Dor; Tel Aviv
University, et al.: SHALOM
Spaceborne Hyperspectral
Applicative Land and Ocean
Mission: A Joint Project of ASI-ISA
Hirokazu Yamamoto;
Satoshi Tsuchida, GSJ
A Study on Vicarious Calibration
and Cross Calibration for Hisui
Hyperspectral and Multispectral
Imager
Greg Kopp, et al., University of Colorado
Radiometric Absolute Accuracy
Improvements for Imaging
Spectrometry with Hysics
An informal vicarious calibration filed trip was conducted after the IGARSS in July 2013. Participants and
missions represented were France (HypXIM), Japan
(HISUI), China (HJ1 & new IS), Israel (Shalom) and Australia (CSIRO).
The first aim was to source out potential for a southern
hemisphere calibration site. Two sites were investigated.
The first is a site established by CSIRO at Lake Lefroy,
Western Australia and has now been adopted for the
Japanese HISUI mission. The second investigation was
at Esperance, Western Australia searching for a site that
was appropriate for calibration throughout the full VNIRSWIR wavelengths.
The second aim was a demonstration of novel techniques
for remote measurements. A combination of traditional
field spectral measurements was demonstrated as well as an
innovative approach developed by CSIRO using an autonomous vehicle—“Outback rover” equipped with several
sensors (imaging spectrometer, 3 point spectrometer, temperature, humidity sensors, DGPS and GPS). The rover can
be pre-programmed to acquire across transects or remotely
controlled and is programmed to track satellite overpasses.
During the field measurement, several satellite overpasses
were scheduled, including Hyperion, ASTER and HJ1.
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TABLE 2.
PRESENTER
TITLE
Eyal Ben Dor, Avia Kafri, Giancarlo
Varacalli
SHALOM: An Italian Israeli Hyperspectral Orbital Mission—Update
Lifu Zhang, et al.
Progress in Chinese Satellite
Hyperspectral Missions
Jose Moreno, et al.
Global Mapping of Terrestrial Vegetation Photosynthesis: The Fluorescence Explorer (FLEX) Mission
Hermann Kaufmann et al.
The EnMAP Mission—Update
Veronique Carrere, Xavier Briottet,
Stephane Jacquemoud, Rodolphe Marion, Anne Bourguignon,
Malik Chami, Jocelyn Chanussot,
Stéphane Chevrel, Philippe Deliot,
Marie
The French EO High Spatial Resolution Hyperspectral Dual Mission
HYPXIM—An Update
Tsuneo Matsunaga, Akira Iwasaki, Satoshi Tsuchida, Jun Tanii,
Osamu Kashimura, Ryosuke
Nakamura, Hirokazu Yamamoto,
Tetsushi Tachikawa, Shuichi
Rokugawa
Current Status of Hyperspectral
Imager Suite (HISUI)
Dr. Curtis Davis
The Hyperspectral Imager for the
Coastal Ocean (HICO), TBC
Dr. Elisabeth Middleton
The EO1 Hyperion Mission, TBC
Dr. Stefano Pignatti
PRISMA the Italian Hyperspectral
Mission, TBC
R. Green
Update on Status of HYSPIRI
Mission, TBC
TABLE 3.
PRESENTER
TITLE
Dr. Steve Ungar
Calibration and Validation of EO1 Hyperion
(tbc)
Dr. Tobias Storch
EnMAP Data Product Standards
Ms. Cindy Ong
Calibration and Validation for International
Satellite Imaging Spectroscopy Missions:
Australia’s Contribution
Dr. Alex Held
Imaging Spectroscopy Validation Activities
Under the Australian Terrestrial Ecosystem
Research Network
Dr. Nigel Fox
Vicarious Calibration for Hyperspectral
Sensors
Dr. Harald Krawczyk
Radiometric In-Flight Calibration of EnMAP
Dr. Karl Segl
EnMAP-Validation Plan
Dr. Hirokazu Yamamoto
Cal/Val and Cross-Calibration Activities
Within the HISUI Mission
Prof. Wolfgang Kresse
The Development of an ISO Standard for Remote Sensing: ISO/DTS 19159-1.2 Geographic
Information - Calibration and Validation of
Remote Sensing Imagery Sensors—Part 1:
Optical Sensors
Dr. Kurt Thome
Requirements for Calibration and Validation
of Remotely Sensed Data
UPCOMING ACTIVITIES OF ISIS IN 2014
The ISIS working group has compiled and submitted two
full invited sessions for IGARSS 2014 in Quebec City,
Canada. One session will focus on the latest development
on spaceborne imaging spectrometer missions, while the
20
other session will be devoted to the issue of calibration
and validation. Details on both sessions are given below.
Session Title: International Spaceborne Imaging Spectroscopy Missions: Updates and News (I.33)
Proposal ID #554, ID #555
Session Chair: Mr. Andreas Mueller (DLR), Dr. Uta
Heiden (DLR)
This session is part of the IEEE GRSS International Spaceborne Imaging Spectroscopy (ISIS) TC. The ISIS aims at
exchanging information on hyperspectral satellite mission
activities worldwide. The scope of the session is to provide
the remote sensing community with an overview of the status of current and future spaceborne imaging spectroscopy
missions for terrestrial and aquatic applications. Besides the
mission and instrument payload concepts, the presentations will also provide insights into the various data policies
of the individual data providers. In general, this session will
provide a forum for discussions on all mission aspects and
potential cross-links between missions. (See Table 2.)
Session Title: Calibration and Validation and Standards
in Support of Spaceborne Imaging Spectroscopy Missions
Proposal ID #559, #524
Session Chair: C. Ong (CSIRO)
One of the fundamental underpinning activities for
Earth Observation (EO) is the calibration and validation
of EO sensors. Calibration and validation determines the
quality and integrity of the data provided by EO sensors
and has enormous downstream impacts on the accuracy
and reliability of EO products generated from the sensors.
Because of its importance, a theme on this subject was
initiated as part of the ISIS TC.
This session is therefore part of ISIS and has linkages
to the Earth Science Informatics and Image Analysis and
Data Fusion Technical Committees. The scope of the session is to provide the imaging spectroscopy community
with an overview of calibration and validation activities
for current and future spaceborne imaging spectroscopy
missions for terrestrial and aquatic applications. Besides
discussions on new cal/val concepts and strategies, the
session will also provide a forum for potential cross-calibration activities and data standard definitions where
possible data products and metadata standards for all
data levels may be discussed. (See Table 3.)
WORKSHOP ON CALIBRATION/VALIDATION OF
SPACEBORNE IMAGING SPECTROMETERS IN 2014
The goal of this workshop is primarily to discuss practical
solutions for upcoming and planned imaging spectrometer
missions for on board and vicarious calibration and validation approaches. Based on the outcome of the workshop
references and guidelines shall be established to be used
in the planning of calibration and validation activities for
imaging spectrometer missions to be generically applicable
to a variety of missions and instruments.
Topics of the workshop may include:
◗ Characterisation of vicarious terrestrial calibration sites,
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◗ The Moon as a calibration site,
◗ Multi-sensor calibration concepts,
◗ In-Situ measurement requirements and instrumenta-
tion, and
◗ Linking ISIS and CEOS WGCV IVOS Subgroup with
focus on operational IS related calibration/validation
and institutional requirements.
◗ ISO standards and their relevance and linkage and ISIS
community’s potential contribution.
Details on this workshop will be discussed before
IGARSS 2014 with the contributors to the calibration and validation session and iterated with all
participants at the planned ISIS discussion forum at
the conference.
GABRIELE MOSER, University of Genoa, Italy
DEVIS TUIA, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
MICHAL SHIMONI, Royal Military Academy, Brussels, Belgium
2014 IEEE GRSS Data Fusion Contest: Multiresolution
Fusion of Thermal Hyperspectral and VIS Data
I. INTRODUCTION
he 2014 Data Fusion Contest, organized by the Image
Analysis and Data Fusion (IADF) Technical Committee of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote
Sensing Society (GRSS), aims at providing
a challenging image analysis opportunity,
including multiresolution and multisensor
fusion, very high resolution imagery, and
a type of remote sensing data source previously not seen in past Data Fusion Contests. The 2014 Contest involves two datasets acquired at different spectral ranges
and spatial resolutions: a coarser-resolution long-wave infrared (LWIR, thermal
infrared) hyperspectral data set and fineresolution data acquired in the visible (VIS) wavelength
range. The former is acquired by an 84-channel imager
that covers the wavelengths between 7.8 to 11.5 μm with
approximately one-meter spatial resolution. The latter is a
series of color images acquired during separate flight-lines
with approximately 20-cm spatial resolution. The two data
sources cover an urban area near Thetford Mines in Québec, Canada (see Fig. 1), and were acquired and were provided for the Contest by Telops Inc. (Canada).
The 2014 Data Fusion Contest has been framed as two
parallel competitions: the Classification Contest and the
Paper Contest. The Classification Contest took place in
the past weeks, while the Paper Contest is currently open
to the international community of remote sensing.
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MARCH 2014
II. THE CLASSIFICATION CONTEST
The goal of the Classification Contest was to exploit coarser
resolution thermal hyperspectral data and finer resolution
color data to generate an accurate classification map at the finer of the two observed
resolutions. Ranking for the Classification
Contest was based on quantitative accuracy
parameters computed with respect to undisclosed test samples. In addition to accuracy,
another relevant aspect to assess a classification method is its computational burden,
given the provided amount of training samples. In the 2014 Classification Contest, participants were given a limited time period
to submit their classification maps after
the competition was started. To also allow participants to
effectively focus their methods on the proposed multiresolution task and type of input data, the Classification Contest
has consisted of two steps. In the first step, the participants
were provided with only a subset of the data endowed with
ground truth to train their algorithms. In the second step,
the participants received the whole data set and were asked
to submit their classification maps over the whole imaged
area in a short time period (two weeks). In parallel, they
submitted descriptions of their classification approaches.
III. HOW TO GET THE DATA
AND ENTER THE PAPER CONTEST
The Paper Contest aims at promoting novel synergetic uses
of multiresolution and multisensor data as well as of thermal hyperspectral imagery. Participants will submit 4-page
IEEE-style manuscripts using the aforementioned data for
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Technical Committee: http://www.linkedin.com/group
s?home=&gid=3678437&trk=anet_ug_hm&goback=.
______________________________________
gmr_3678437.
_________
Note that, regardless of the common format, submissions to the IGARSS-2014 conference and to the Paper
Contest are independent, i.e., a manuscript submitted to
the Paper Contest will not be considered for inclusion in
the IGARSS-2014 technical program.
FIGURE 1. Detail of the multisensor and multiresolution data set
for the 2014 Data Fusion Contest: finer-resolution data from a color
camera (left) and coarser-resolution datacube from a thermal hyperspectral camera (right). Data acquired and provided by Telops Inc.
fusion tasks. Each manuscript will describe the addressed
problem, the proposed method, and the experimental
results. The topic of the manuscript in the data fusion area
is totally open and participants are encouraged to tackle
open and cutting-edge problems in multisensor and/or
multiresolution data processing, as well as in the analysis
of thermal hyperspectral images. For this competition,
additional data were also provided by Telops Inc., including ground spectral measurements associated with ground
materials in the imaged area.
To register for the Contest and download the data,
participants can visit the GRSS website: ___________
http://www.grssieee.org/community/technical-committees/data-fusion/
______________________________________
data-fusion-contest/ and the Contest website: http://
____
______________
cucciolo.dibe.unige.it/IPRS/IEEE_GRSS_IADFTC_2014_
______________________________________
Data_Fusion_Contest.htm.
__________________
Participants are obliged to read and to accept the Contest terms and conditions. Each manuscript will be written
in English and will be formatted as a PDF file following the
guidelines and templates of the 2014 IEEE Geoscience and
Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS-2014; details can be
found at http://www.igarss2014.org). The manuscript will
specify the name(s), affiliation(s), and e-mail contact(s)
of the (individual or team) participant(s). Submission will
consist in sending the manuscript as an attachment to an
e-mail addressed to _________
[email protected]. The submission deadline is June 8, 2014.
Questions and comments on the data and the Contest can be submitted to the Linkedin group of the IADF
IV. AWARD COMMITTEE FOR THE PAPER CONTEST
Each manuscript submitted to the Paper Contest will be
evaluated by an Award Committee on the basis of its novelty, scientific contribution, analysis and fusion methodology, experimental validation, and clarity of explanation.
The Award Committee will be composed of:
◗ Jon A. Benediktsson, University of Iceland (Iceland)
◗ Martin Chamberland, Telops Inc., Québec (Canada)
◗ Jenny Q. Du, Mississippi State University (USA)
◗ Paolo Gamba, University of Pavia (Italy)
◗ Gabriele Moser, University of Genoa (Italy)
◗ Fabio Pacifici, DigitalGlobe Inc. (USA)
◗ Michal Shimoni, Royal Military Academy (Belgium)
◗ Devis Tuia, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
(Switzerland).
V. RESULTS, AWARDS, AND PRIZES
The winning teams of both competitions will be awarded
at IGARSS-2014 (Québec, Canada) in July 2014. The award
ceremony will take place during the Technical Committee
Event. Each winning team will be awarded an IEEE Certificate of Recognition and will receive a Nexus 7 tablet (one per
team). Furthermore, a paper summarizing the outcomes of
both competitions will be submitted to the IEEE Journal of
Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote
Sensing (JSTARS) and in order to maximize impact and promote the potential of current multisensor remote sensing
technologies, the open-access option will be used for this
submission. GRSS will cover the costs related to the prizes,
to the open-access fees, and to the winning teams’ participation to the Technical Committee Event at IGARSS-2014.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The IADF Technical Committee and the Contest organizers wish to express their greatest appreciation to Telops
Inc. for acquiring and providing the data used in both
competitions, to the Centre de Recherche Public Gabriel
Lippmann (CRPGL, Luxembourg) and to Dr. Martin Schlerf (CRPGL) for their contribution of the Hyper-Cam
LWIR sensor, to Dr. Michaela De Martino (University
of Genoa, Italy) for her contribution to the preparation
of the Classification Contest, and to the IEEE GRSS for
continuously supporting the annual Data Fusion Contest
through funding and resources.
GRS
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CHAPTERS
Distinguished Lecturer Program
T
he IEEE GRSS Distinguished Lecturer Program
provides GRSS Chapters with talks by experts on
topics of interest and importance to the Geoscience
and Remote Sensing community. The purpose of the
program is to provide our members with an opportunity to learn about the work being done in our discipline and to meet some of the prominent members of
our Society. Information about the speakers and how
to take advantage of the program, including an application from, are available at the GRSS website (look
for “Distinguished Lecturer” under the “Education”
tab). Further information including a manual with instructions can be obtained by e-mailing the program
chair, David Le Vine at [email protected].
_____________
The program has been structured so that Chapters
will incur no cost in making use of this program. Briefly
a chapter contacts a lecturer from the list of available
speakers, and once the initial details of the visit have
been worked out (e.g. date and a rough budget) the
chapter fills out the application form. The Lecturer
travels on his/her own expense with reimbursement
made directly by IEEE to the Distinguished Lecturer.
The speakers and topics for 2014 are:
◗ Lorenzo Bruzzone: Current Scenario and Challenges in the Analysis of Multitemporal Remote Sensing
Images
◗ Melba Crawford: Advanced Methods for Classification of Hypersectral Data
◗ Akira Hirose: Advanced Neural Adaptive Processing
in Interferometric and Polarimetric Radar Imaging
◗ Ya-Qiu Jin: Research on the Modeling and Simulation of Polarimetric Scattering and Information Retrieval for Microwave Remote Sensing
◗ Yann Kerr: SMOS First Successes and Related Issues:
The First Global Soil Moisture and Sea Salinity Maps
are Coming
MARCH 2014
◗ Ricardo Lanari: Differential SAR Inteferometry: Ba-
sic Principles, Key Applications and New Advances
◗ Eric Pottier: SAR Polarimetry: From Basics to Ap-
plications
◗ H.K. Ramapriyan: Earth Science Informatics: An
Overview
◗ Werner Weisbeck: Digital Beam-Forming in Remote
Sensing
◗ Valery Zavorotny: Remote Sensing Using GNSS Bi-
static Radar of Opportunity.
Abstracts for the talks and background information
for each Lecturer are available on the GRSS website:
www.grss-ieee.org.
Suggestions on ways to improve the program or
ideas for topics and/or speakers are always welcome.
Please send your comments or questions to the program chair at [email protected].
____________ Your suggestions
would be greatly appreciated.
ABSTRACTS
CURRENT SCENARIO AND CHALLENGES IN
THE ANALYSIS OF MULTITEMPORAL
REMOTE SENSING IMAGES
Lorenzo Bruzzone
In the last decade a large number
of new satellite remote sensing missions have been launched resulting
in a dramatic improvement in the
capabilities of acquiring images
of the Earth surface. This involves
an enhanced possibility to acquire
multitemporal images of large areas
of the Earth surface, with improved temporal and spatial
resolution with respect to traditional satellite data. Such
new scenario significantly increases the interest of the
remote sensing community in the multitemporal domain,
requiring the development of novel data processing
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techniques and making it possible to address new important
and challenging applications. The potentials of the technological development are strengthen from the increased
awareness of the importance of monitoring the Earth surface
at local, regional and global scale. Assessing, monitoring and
predicting the dynamics of land covers and of antrophic processes is at the basis of both the understanding of the problems related to climate changes and the definition of politics
for a sustainable development. Nonetheless, the properties
of the images acquired by the last generation sensors pose
new methodological problems that require the development
of a new generation of methods for the analysis of multitemporal images and temporal series of data.
After a general overview of the problems related to the
analysis of multitemporal images and time series of data,
this talk will focus on the very important problem of automatic change detection between multitemporal images. The
development and the use of effective automatic techniques
for change detection are of major importance in many of the
above-mentioned application scenarios. The increased geometrical resolution of multispectral and SAR sensors, the
increased revisit time of high resolution systems, and the
expected availability of time series of hyperspectral images
in the near future result in many different methodological
problems as well as in very important new possible applications. The talk will address these problems by pointing out
the state of the art and the most promising methodologies
for change detection on images acquired by the last generation of satellite sensors. Examples of the use of change-detection approaches in operative scenarios will be provided.
The presentation can be tuned on request on different
kinds of target audience: 1) students; 2) remote sensing
scientists; 3) scientists expert in data analysis.
ADVANCED METHODS FOR CLASSIFICATION
OF HYPERSPECTRAL DATA
Melba Crawford
Accurate land cover classification that
ensures robust mapping under diverse
conditions is important in environmental studies where the identification of the land cover changes and its
quantification have critical implications for management practices, ecosystem health, and the impact of climate.
Hyperspectral data provide enhanced capability for more
accurate discrimination of land cover, but significant challenges remain for classification, including highly correlated
spectral bands, high dimensionality, and nonlinear spectral
response in nonstationary environments. Advanced methods in machine learning, including nonlinear manifold
learning, semi-supervised learning, and active learning are
promising for classification of hyperspectral data.
Nonlinear global and local manifold learning methods provide natural capability to both accommodate
nonlinear scattering and practical, robust feature extrac24
tion methods in dynamic environments. Adaptive semisupervised approaches train the classifier with labeled
samples in one location/time and adapt supervised classifiers to samples in spatially disjoint areas or at different
times where samples exhibit significantly different distributions [Kim and Crawford 2010]. Active learning techniques that focus on developing informative training sets
with minimal redundancy have been demonstrated to
promote greater exploitation of the information in both
labeled and unlabeled data, while significantly reducing
the cost of data collection [Di and Crawford 2011]. New
developments for feature extraction via manifold learning, semi-supervised classification, and active learning of
hyperspectral data are outlined and demonstrated using
airborne and space-based hyperspectral data.
ADVANCED NEURAL ADAPTIVE PROCESSING
IN INTERFEROMETRIC AND POLARIMETRIC
RADAR IMAGING
Akira Hirose
This talk presents and discusses
advanced neural networks by focusing on complex-valued neural networks (CVNNs) and their applications in the remote sensing and
imaging fields. CVNNs are suitable
for adaptive processing of complexamplitude information. Since active
remote sensing deals with coherent electromagnetic
wave, we can expect CVNNs to work more effectively than
conventional neural networks or other adaptive methods
in real-number space. Quaternion (or Hypercomplexvalued) neural networks are also discussed in relation to
polarization information processing.
The beginning half of the Talk is devoted to presentation of the basic idea, overall framework, and fundamental treatment in the CVNNs. We discuss the processing
dynamics of Hebbian rule, back-propagation learning, and
self-organizing map in the complex domain. The latter half
shows some examples of CVNN processing in the geoscience and remote sensing society (GRSS) fields. Namely, we
present distortion reduction in phase unwrapping to generate digital elevation model (DEM) from the data obtained
by interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR). In
polarization SAR (PolSAR), we apply quaternion networks
for adaptive classification. Another example is ground penetrating radar (GPR) to visualize underground objects to
distinguish specific targets in high-clutter situation. Finally
we discuss the prospect of the CVNNs in the GRSS fields.
MODELING, SIMULATION, INVERSION AND
CHANG’E DATA VALIDATION FOR MICROWAVE
OBSERVATION IN CHINA’S LUNAR PROJECT
Ya-Qiu Jin
In China’s first lunar exploration project, Chang-E 1 (CE-1), a
multi-channel microwave radiometer in passive microwave
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remote sensing, was first aboard the
satellite, with the purpose of measuring microwave brightness temperature
from lunar surface and surveying the
global distribution of lunar regolith
layer thickness.
In this lecture, the multi-layered
model of lunar surface media is presented, and numerical simulations of multi-channel
brightness temperature (Tb) from global lunar surface are
obtained. It is applied to study of retrieving the regolith
layer thickness and evaluation of global distribution of 3He
content in regolith media.
Multi-channel Tb measurements by CE-1 microwave
radiometers are displayed, and applied to inversion of the
reggolith layer thickness, which are verified and validated
by the Apollo in situ measurements. It is the first time to
retrieve the regolith thickness using microwave remote
sensing technology.
In active microwave remote sensing, based on the statistics of the lunar cratered terrain, e.g. population, dimension and shape of craters, the terrain feature of cratered
lunar surface is numerically generated. Electromagnetic
scattering is simulated, and SAR (synthetic aperture radar)
image is then numerically generated, e.g. making use of
the digital elevation and Clementine UVVIS data at Apollo
15 landing site as the ground truth, an SAR image at Apollo
15 landing site is simulated. Utilizing the nadir echoes
time delay and intensity difference from the surface and
subsurface, high frequency (HF) radar sounder is an effective tool for investigation of lunar subsurface structure in
lunar exploration. Making use of rough surface scattering
and ray tracing of geometric optics, a numerical simulation
of radar echoes from lunar layering structures with surface
feature, the topography of mare and highland surfaces is
developed. Radar echoes and its range images are numerically simulated, and their dependence on the parameters
of lunar layering interfaces are described.
SMOS FIRST SUCCESSES AND RELATED ISSUES:
THE FIRST GLOBAL SOIL MOISTURE AND
SEA SALINITY MAPS ARE COMING
Yann Kerr
SMOS, an L-Band radiometer using
aperture synthesis to achieve a good
spatial resolution, was successfully
launched on November 2, 2009. It
was developed and made under the
leadership of the European Space
Agency (ESA) as an Earth Explorer
Opportunity mission. It is a joint program with the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES)
in France and the Centro para el Desarrollo Teccnologico
Industrial (CDTI) in Spain.
SMOS carries a single payload, an L band 2D interferometric, radiometer in the 1400–1427 MHz h protected
MARCH 2014
band. This wavelength penetrates well through the vegetation and the atmosphere is almost transparent enabling
to infer both soil moisture and vegetation water content
over land and sea surface salinity over the oceans. SMOS
achieves an unprecedented spatial resolution of 50 km at
L-band maximum (43 km on average) with multi angularfully polarized brightness temperatures over the globe and
with a revisit time smaller than 3 days.
SMOS as been now acquiring data for over two years.
The data quality exceeds what was expected, showing very
good sensitivity and stability. The data is however very much
impaired by man made emission in the protected band,
leading to degraded measurements in several areas including parts of Europe and of China. However, many different
international teams are now addressing cal val activities
in various parts of the world, with notably large field campaigns either on the long time scale or over specific targets
to address the specific issues. These campaigns take place in
various parts of the world, in different environments from
the Antarctic plateau to the deserts, from rain forests to deep
oceans. Actually SMOS is a new sensor making new measurements paving the way to new applications. However, it also
requires a very fine analysis of the data so as to validate both
the approach and the retrieval quality, as well as for monitoring the evolution of the sensor. To achieve such goals it
is very important to link efficiently ground measurement to
satellite measurements through field campaigns and related
airborne acquisitions as well as with other existing sensors.
This lecture thus gives an overview of the science goals of the
SMOS mission, a description of the main mission elements,
and a foretaste of the first results including performances at
brightness temperature as well as at geophysical parameters.
It will include how the ground campaigns were elaborated
to address the main cal Val activities accounting for SMOS
specificities, in what context they were organized as well as
the most significant results.
DIFFERENTIAL SAR INTERFEROMETRY: BASIC
PRINCIPLES, KEY APPLICATIONS AND NEW ADVANCE
Riccardo Lanari
Differential SAR Interferometry (DInSAR) is a microwave imaging technique that permits to investigate earth
surface deformation occurring in an
area of interest with a centimeter (in
some cases millimeter) accuracy. In
particular, the DInSAR technique exploits the phase difference (interferogram) of temporally separated SAR images relative to the
investigated zone and has already shown its capability in
detecting surface deformation caused by different natural
and anthropogenic phenomena. The aim of this talk is to
introduce the basic concepts involved in the DInSAR technique, summarize the key applications of this method
and present its new advance. In particular, a discussion on
the rationale of the DInSAR approach will be given first,
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highlighting the key points and the main limitations. Several examples will be presented for underlining the capability of the technique to analyze the displacements caused by
different phenomena such as volcano deformation, earthquakes and urban subsidence. Subsequently, the talk will
be focused on the advanced DInSAR techniques allowing
to analyze the temporal evolution of the detected displacements through the generation of deformation time-series
computed from a data set of temporarily separated SAR images. Finally, the advance brought in by the new generation
X-band spaceborne SAR sensors, characterized by higher
spatial resolution and shorter revisit times with respect to
the earlier C-band systems, will be discussed, emphasizing
the new investigation possibilities for fast varying deformation phenomena.
SAR POLARIMETRY: FROM BASICS TO APPLICATIONS
Eric Pottier
SAR polarimetry represents today a very
active area of research in Radar Remote
Sensing, and it becomes important to
train and prepare the future generation
to this very important topic.
The aim of this tutorial is to provide a substantial and balanced introduction to the basic theory, scattering
concepts, systems and advanced concepts, and applications
typical to radar polarimetric remote sensing. This tutorial
on SAR polarimetry touches several subjects: basic theory,
scattering modeling, data representations, coherent and
incoherent target decompositions, speckle filtering, terrain
and land-use classification, man-made target analysis, etc.
This lecture will be illustrated by ALOS-PALSAR, RadarSat2 and TerraSAR-X polarimetric SAR images. The connection to polarimetric SAR interferometry (Pol-InSAR),
polarimetric SAR tomography (Pol-TomSAR) and compact/
hybrid polarimetric SAR will be also reviewed.
This lecture is intended to scientists, engineers and students engaged in the fields of Radar Remote Sensing and
interested in Polarimetric SAR image analysis and applications. Some background in SAR processing techniques and
microwave scattering would be an advantage and familiarity in matrix algebra is required.
EARTH SCIENCE INFORMATICS: AN OVERVIEW
H.K. “Rama” Ramapriyan
Over the last 10–15 years, significant advances have been made in
information management, there are
an increasing number of individuals entering the field of information
management as it applies to Geoscience and Remote Sensing data, and
the field of “informatics” has come
to its own. Informatics is the science and technology
of applying computers and computational methods to
26
the systematic analysis, management, interchange, and
representation of science data, information, and knowledge. Informatics also includes the use of computers and
computational methods to support decision making and
applications. Earth Science Informatics (ESI, a.k.a. geoinformatics) is the application of informatics in the Earth
science domain. ESI is a rapidly developing discipline
integrating computer science, information science, and
Earth science. Major national and international research
and infrastructure projects in ESI have been carried out
or are on-going. Notable among these are: the Global
Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), the European Commission’s INSPIRE, the U.S. NSDI and Geospatial One-Stop, the NASA EOSDIS, and the NSF DataONE,
EarthCube and Cyberinfrastructure for Geoinformatics.
More than 18 departments and agencies in the U.S. federal government have been active in Earth science informatics. All major space agencies in the world, have been
involved in ESI research and application activities. In the
United States, the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP), whose membership includes nearly
150 organizations (government, academic and commercial) dedicated to managing, delivering and applying
Earth science data, has been working on many ESI topics
since 1998. The Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS)’s Working Group on Information Systems
and Services (WGISS) has been actively coordinating the
ESI activities among the space agencies.
The talk will present an overview of current efforts
in ESI, the role members of IEEE GRSS play, and discuss
recent developments in data preservation and provenance.
DIGITAL BEAM-FORMING IN REMOTE SENSING
Werner Wiesbeck
The invention of the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) principle dates back
to the early 1950s. The basic idea is
to filter targets in a side looking radar
according to their Doppler history in
azimuth and by pulse or FM modulation compression in range. Since this
time SAR systems have been, from
a technical point of view, considerably refined to the
state of the art where resolution and accuracy are close
to the theoretical limits. The best innovations have been
reached in polarimetry and interferometry. Nevertheless, the principles are still the same: The SAR is a sidelooking radar where resolution is achieved in range by
bandwidth and in azimuth by Doppler processing. The
beam-forming concepts for coverage are still the same:
dish antennas (scanned or fixed), antenna arrays (phased
or fixed) or switchable antenna systems. All these have
the drawback that the coverage defines the synthetic
aperture length and by this the azimuth resolution or for
scanned beams the loss of coverage has to be taken into
account. These draw backs can be overcome by Digital
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Beam-Forming. Significant advantages result by this. In
its simplest form the transmit antenna illuminates a usually larger footprint, as do the multiple receive antennas.
The beam-forming is accomplished in a digital process.
Multiple receive beams may be processed simultaneously.
The RF losses can significantly be reduced, allowing lower
gain for the antennas, and thus larger footprints. In addition Digital beam-forming can handle coded signals, like
OFDM, for range and azimuth compression. This talk will
present the principles and applications and latest results
of Digital Beam-Forming in Remote Sensing.
REMOTE SENSING USING GNSS BISTATIC RADAR
OF OPPORTUNITY
Valery Zavorotny
In the past decade there has been considerable interest in using signals of
opportunity such as those from Global Navigation Satellite Systems for remote sensing of ocean, land, snow and
ice. GNSS-reflected signals, after being
received and processed by the airborne
or space-borne receiver, are available
as delay correlation waveforms or as delay-Doppler maps.
These bistatic signals collected from the ocean surface can
be used for altimetric or wind-scatterometric purposes
complimenting traditional monostatic radar techniques.
Similarly, information about soil moisture, snow depth
and vegetation can be inferred from GNSS reflected signals. Even signals routinely recorded by GPS receivers
installed to measure crustal deformation for geophysical
studies can be used for remote sensing of soil moisture,
snow and vegetation in the vicinity of their antennas. This
technique exploits interference of direct and reflected signals causing the composite signal, observed using signalto-noise ratio (SNR) data, to undulate with time while the
GPS satellite ascends or descends at relatively low elevation
angles. The existing research has shown that GNSS reflectometry has the potential to be a low-cost, wide-coverage
technique for studying Earth’s environmental processes.
In the first part of the talk an overview will be given
to above applications of GNSS reflectometry, whereas
in the second part the measurements of ocean surface
roughness, wind speed and direction will be covered
considering both aircraft and orbital receiving systems.
A theoretical forward model which relates the delayDoppler map to the bistatic radar cross section, and
then to statistical characteristics of the wind-driven
waves will be discussed. Algorithms to retrieve wind
speed and wind direction using delay-Doppler maps
processed from the data collected by the GPS software
receiver onboard the NOAA Gulfstream-IV jet aircraft
will be demonstrated. Finally, a performance will be
discussed of the space-borne bistatic radar employed in
the planned Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System
(CYGNSS) mission.
GRSS CHAPTERS AND CONTACT INFORMATION
CHAPTER LOCATION
JOINT WITH (SOCIETIES)
CHAPTER CHAIR
E-MAIL ADDRESS
Boston Section, MA
GRS
William Blackwell
[email protected]
________
Springfield Section, MA
AP, MTT, ED, GRS, LEO
Paul Siqueira
[email protected]
_____________
Rochester/Binghamton/Buffalo/Ithaca/Syracuse
GRS
Anthony Vodacek
[email protected]
___________
GRS
Miguel Roman
[email protected]
_______________
Region 1: Northeastern USA
Region 2: Eastern USA
Washington, DC & Northern VA area
Region 3: Southeastern USA
Atlanta Section, GA
AES, GRS
Kristin Frinkley Bing
[email protected]
_______________
Eastern North Carolina Section
GRS
Linda Hayden
[email protected]
______________
Melbourne Section, FL
GRS, AES
William Junek
[email protected]
_____________
Region 4: Central USA
Central Illinois Section
LEO, GRS
Weng Cho Chew
[email protected]
___________
Southeastern Michigan Section
GRS
Adib Y. Nashashibi
[email protected]
____________
Denver Section, CO
AP, MTT, GRS
Michael Janezic
[email protected]
______________
Houston Section, TX
AP, MTT, GRS, LEO
Christi Madsen
[email protected]
_____________
Region 5: Southwestern USA
Region 6: Western USA
Alaska Section, AK
GRS
Franz Meyer
[email protected]
____________
Los Angeles Section, CA
GRS
Paul A. Rosen
[email protected]
_______________
MARCH 2014
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CHAPTER LOCATION
JOINT WITH (SOCIETIES)
CHAPTER CHAIR
E-MAIL ADDRESS
Ottawa Section, ON
OE, GRS
Yifeng Zhou
[email protected]
____________
Quebec Section, Quebec, QC
AES, OE, GRS
Yves DeVillers
[email protected]
_________________
Toronto Section, ON
SP, VT, AES, UFF, OE, GRS
Sri Krishnan
[email protected]
_____________
Vancouver Section, BC
AES, GRS
David G. Michelson
[email protected]
___________
Region 7: Canada
Region 8: Europe,
Middle East and Africa
Benelux Section
AES, GRS
Mark Bentum
[email protected]
_____________
Croatia Section
AES, GRS
Juraj Bartolic
[email protected]
___________
[email protected]
_____________
France Section
GRS
Mathieu Fauvel
Germany Section
GRS
Irena Hajnsek
[email protected]
___________
Italy (Central) Section
GRS
Simonetta Paloscia
[email protected]
____________
Italy (South) Section
GRS
Maurizio Migliaccio
[email protected]
________________
Russia Section
GRS
Anatolij Shutko
[email protected]
_________________
[email protected]
_________
Saudi Arabia Section
GRS
Yakoub Bazi
[email protected]
__________
South Africa Section
AES, GRS
Waldo Kleynhans
Jeanine Engelbrecht
[email protected]
_____________
[email protected]
______________
Spain Section
GRS
Antonio J. Plaza
[email protected]
_________
Student Branch, Spain Section
GRS
Pablo Benedicto
[email protected]
_____________
Turkey Section
GRS
Kadim Tasdemir
[email protected]
__________
Ukraine Section
AP, MTT, ED, AES, GRS, NPS
Nataliya K. Sakhnenko
[email protected]
_______________
United Kingdom & Rep. of Ireland (UKRI) Section
GRS, OE
Yong Xue
[email protected]
_____________
Region 9: Latin America
Student Branch, Colombia Section
GRS
Leyini Parra Espitia
[email protected]
___________
Student Branch, South Brazil Section
GRS
Marcus Vasconcelos
[email protected]
___________
Guadalajara Section, Mexico
GRS
Iván Villalón
[email protected]
____________
Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales
Sections, Australia
GRS
Fuqin Li
[email protected]
__________
Bangalore Section, India
GRS
Daya Sagar Behara
[email protected]
_____________
Beijing Section, China
GRS
Ji Wu
[email protected]
_________
Student Branch, Beijing Section, China
GRS
Bin Peng
[email protected]
______________
Delhi Section, India
GRS
O.P.N. Calla
[email protected]
___________
Gujarat Section, India
GRS
Shiv Mohan
[email protected]
_______________
Indonesia Section
GRS, AES
Arifin Nugroho
[email protected]
______________
Islamabad Section, Pakistan
GRS, AES
M. Umar Khattak
[email protected]
_____________
Kolkata Section Chapter
GRS
Animesh Maitra
[email protected]
_______________
Region 10: Asia and Pacific
Malaysia Section
GRS
Voon-Chet Koo
[email protected]
___________
Nanjing Section, China
GRS
Feng Jiao
[email protected]
_______________
Seoul Section, Korea
GRS
Joong-Sun Won
[email protected]
___________
Singapore Section
AES, GRS
See Kye Yak
[email protected]
___________
Taipei Section, Taiwan
GRS
Yang-Lang Chang
[email protected]
___________
Tokyo/Sapporo/Sendai/Shin-Etsu/Nagoya/
Kansai/Hiroshima/Shikoku/Fukuoka Section
GRS
Akira Hirose
[email protected]
______________
Abbreviation Guide for IEEE Technical Societies
AES
AP
ED
EMB
LEO
MTT
Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society
Antennas and Propagation Society
Electron Devices Society
Engineering in Medicine and Biology
Lasers & Electro-Optics Society
Microwave Theory and Techniques Society
NPS
OE
SP
UFF
VT
Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society
Oceanic Engineering Society
Signal Processing Society
Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control Society
Vehicular Technology Society
GRS
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EDUCATION
FABIO DELL’ACQUA AND LUCA PASCA,
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale e dell’Informazione,
University of Pavia, Italy
Technical Education in the European University
System on Aerospace and Remote Sensing
A Year 2013 Review
ABSTRACT
his paper offers a synthesis of the results from an
extensive search that has been made on graduate courses across Europe to understand patterns and
similarities in graduate-level educational activities in
the field of aerospace science and engineering. 50 universities were selected as a “significant sample”, from
which 150 curricula were analyzed. It has been found
that the vast majority of curricula fit nicely into one
of three main classes, although national regulations
and heritage do probably have a role in making each
class interpreted in a country-specific way. Yet, common features outweigh differences. Not surprisingly,
instead, post-MSc and PhD courses offer a more inhomogeneous picture, but this is obviously not related
to national differences. All in all, the scenario that
emerges is that of a continent-wide good coverage of
all aerospace aspects, and a good homogeneity across
European countries in aerospace-related education.
T
Introduction
by Michael Inggs, Director Education GRSS
University of Cape Town, South Africa
By reviewing Geoscience and Remote Sensing teaching activities around the world, we can all learn,
“new tricks”, and adapt our own ways. We can also
set up fruitful collaborations. This article reviews the
Geoscience and Remote Sensing teaching programmes of Europe. Clearly, this is a huge task, and
the authors have sampled sensibly.
I encourage potential authors to contact me about writing for this column.
Articles about your own department, or your country or region will be of great
interest to us all.
about some limits of the present work and concludes
the paper with some final remarks.
1. INTRODUCTION
The aim of this research is to depict a rough, synthetic
description of what technical education in aerospace
and remote sensing means to European universities.
This work was carried out from September to November 2013, and involved the 50 European universities
that appeared to be most relevant to the issue, according
to criteria explained later in this paper. This resulted in
systematic scanning of 150 curricula where about 850
aerospace and remote sensing courses are offered.
The paper is organized as follows: the next chapter will discuss the criteria that were used to select the
statistical sample of 50 universities, while chapter 3
illustrates the method for the analysis of the curricula.
Chapter 4 lists some findings, while chapter 5 warns
2. THE STATISTICAL SAMPLE
For our review we focused on continental Europe; since
the future waypoint of our work in progress is to analyze relationships between the education and production world in the aerospace domain, no single education-based nor economics-based definition of Europe
can be applied blindly. From a political standpoint, for
example, the situation is pretty complicated as highlighted in Figure 1; from an institutional standpoint,
the European High Education Area (EHEA, 2010)
seemed too wide to include only those geographical
areas having a direct impact on the economic system of
Europe. We thus started from the countries completely
fulfilling the geographical definition of Europe and
Fabio Dell’Acqua is also with Ticinum Aerospace s.r.l., an academic spin-off
from the University of Pavia.
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let the scientific production itself define what universities
and areas were most relevant, as described below.
A selection was necessary, because considering “all universities” is simply not manageable; just to give a figure,
across European Economic Area (EEA, 1992) + Switzerland there exist about 1920 universities according to the
web popularity list provided
by 4icU (4icu,2013). The list
may have been compiled with
SEVERAL COMMON LINES
a loose definition of University,
EMERGED IN EUROPEAN
still the figure is impressive.
Given the limited time and
TECHNICAL EDUCATION
manpower available, we had to
IN AEROSPACE AND
first select a statistically signifiREMOTE SENSING.
cant subsample to be analyzed
in our review, assuming that 50
universities could be sufficient
to depict the situation in 9 countries (of which 2, i.e. Finland and Norway, turned out to feature only one sample
based on our selection procedure). The assumption made
was that of a relationship between the production of scientific papers and the existence of related university courses.
Naturally an assumption of a general correlation between
research and teaching is illusive (Hattie and Marsh, 1996),
but what we needed was not a quantitative relationship.
The limited -and apparently more reasonable- assumption
we made was that an intense research production is a good
proxy for the sheer existence of related courses, with no
assessment of quality implied.
Central
European
Free Trade
Agreement
A paper search was made on the Scopus (2013) database for three different keywords, i.e. “Remote Sensing”, “Aerospace” and “Earth Observation”. Scopus was
selected, among the several scientific search engines
available, as the best compromise, for our purposes,
among correctness & completeness of the database, ease
of use and availability of specific search tools.
A rank of the most frequently appearing European
affiliations in the retrieved papers was produced for each
of the three keywords. The search was inherently limited
to the top 160 results, as Scopus systematically truncates
the result list to the 160th item. Geographical filtering
cuts down this figure to 24, 21, 25 items respectively
on the three cited keywords. One example of output is
shown in Figure 2, under the form of a horizontal bar
diagram representing the 15 top, geographically filtered
items in a single search.
For each of the three rankings, the 10 top universities
were included in the sample. In addition to those 30 Universities, the 3 Universities appearing in all of the three rankings, from 11th rank downwards, were also included into the
list. The 17 remaining slots to reach the final sample size of
50 units were filled with other universities with a criterion
of increasing the presence of underrepresented countries.
The list of represented countries follows: Finland,
France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain,
Switzerland and United Kingdom.
The pie chart in Figure 3 shows the distribution of units
per country. United Kingdom, Italy and Germany contribute most, with around 62%
of units.
Council
of Europe
European
Union
European
Economic
Area
EU
Customs
Union
Eurozone
Schengen
Area
European
Free Trade
Association
Monetary Agreement
with EU
FIGURE 1. Supranational bodies in Europe and politically-based possible definitions of Europe. From:
Wikimedia, authors: “The Emirr” & “Wdcf”. Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Supranational_
European_Bodies-en.svg in Dec 2013.
______________
30
3. THE ANALYSIS
Once selected the 50 universities constituting the statistical sample, we started
a search on their respective
web sites to retrieve MSc programmes containing relevant
courses. Titles of tracks and
courses were explored, and
the content of the course itself
was also analyzed whenever
uncertainty remained after
considering the title.
We have analyzed MSc
de g ree s, e xc lud ing B S c
degrees, because at MSc level
we expect to find a sufficient
level of specialization to definitely tell “aerospace” from
“non-aerospace”. Generally,
undergraduate (BSc) degrees
of the different examined
curriculum turned out not to
be sufficiently characterized.
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Moreover, less specialized
BSc aerospace-related courses
are made available where MSc
aerospace-related courses are
found—i.e. BSc level does
not add much to MSc level in
this respect. For this reason,
our attention was focused on
graduate degrees.
A total of 150 tracks were
examined, and 120 found
to be relevant for out topics of interest, containing
about 850 aerospace-related
courses. The pie chart in
Figure 4 shows the distribution of tracks per country.
United Kingdom, Italy and
Germany convey the largest
contributions, with roughly
56% of tracks altogether.
Keyword: “Remote Sensing”
0
Number of Papers [www.scopus.com]
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
Valencia
Catalunya
Florence
Southampton
Paris (Marie Curie)
Rome (La Sapienza)
Delft
Naples (Federico II)
Bremen
Trento
Aalto
Oxford
Munchen (LMU)
Zurich
Reading
FIGURE 2. Highest occurrence figures of European affiliations in paper found on Scopus with the keyword
pair “Remote Sensing”.
4. FINDINGS
As a first finding, relevant courses are offered almost
exclusively within engineering and sciences faculties. This
is not surprising, and it is also a consequence of having
chosen to look at the technical side of aerospace and not
to education in e.g. the economic and financial side of
aerospace industry.
The purpose of this review was to try and sort out the
possible common lines in European education in this
field. While it was rather simple when we performed a
first, rough test review on Italy, we’ve found a big complexity leap in extending the review to all European countries, because of several differences including in some
cases a difference in how the period of the MSc degree is
defined. Still, we could find some common lines.
It is our understanding that educational programs on
Aerospace and Remote Sensing in Europe may be organized into three main categories:
◗ MSc degree in “Aerospace Hardware”: this type of degree is usually present within a department or faculty of engineering. It explores the aircraft or satellite
structure, and matters regarding them, in great detail.
The main objective is the study of the construction,
the propulsion, the motion, the aerodynamics and the
flight mechanics of the platform. In these programs one
typically finds courses related to fluid dynamics, gas dynamics, design of aircraft, techniques and technologies
of propulsion, aerodynamics, flight dynamics, design or
modeling spatial structures, planning and management
of space missions. We may find this type of degree at:
Imperial College London, The University of Manchester,
University of Surrey, Polytechnic of Milan, Polytechnic
of Turin, University of Naples “Federico II”, Polytechnic
of Madrid, Polytechnic of Catalunya, Polytechnic of
MARCH 2014
50
Lausanne, University of Toulouse. Some universities, as
University of Delft, Cranfield University, The University
of Sheffield, University of Southampton and TUM (Munich polytechnic University), offer a degree with a very
high level of specialization, examining in depth one of
the previous main topics.
◗ MSc in Remote Sensing and Image/Data Processing
or “Aerospace Software”: in this group we find degrees,
which deal with the issue of data capture and processing from aerospace platforms. In some cases, as the
University of Valencia, University of Zurich and University of Rome “La Sapienza”, the main topic is Remote
Sensing, in particular images captured by space-borne
sensors and the consequent information extraction. In
these courses, students learn the fundamentals of the
optical/radar sensors, the related data features and the
main image processing techniques. In the other cases,
the educational scope is multimedia data processing,
where Remote Sensing is seen as a possible application,
1
5
12
9
5
4
10
1
Finland
France
Germany
Italy
Netherlands
Norway
Spain
Switzerland
United Kingdom
3
FIGURE 3. Distribution of units (universities) by country in the
selected sample.
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11
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Finland
France
Germany
Italy
Netherlands
Norway
Spain
Switzerland
United Kingdom
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FIGURE 4. Tracks found relevant to aerospace in the considered
statistical sample.
but from a more generic viewpoint. Classical courses
are always found on data compression techniques, advanced encoding, telecommunication protocols and
digital communication. However, there are also hints,
more or less marked, to Earth observation, optical or
radar sensors and satellite principles. We find this type
of educational offer at University of Southampton, University of Leeds, University of Leicester, University of
Florence, University of Naples “Parthenope”, University
of Pavia (from the current year), University of Delft,
University of Grenoble (INP), University of Grenoble
(Joseph Fourier), University of Toulouse, Polytechnic of
Paris and University of Aalto.
◗ MSc in Geography and GIS or “Aerospace Environmental Applications”: this third category consists
of degrees focused on Remote Sensing for environmental purposes. The use of satellite images to create 2D/3D maps or the theory and practice of GIS, to
monitor environmental transformation and to observe forest, oceans, glacier or urban
AEROSPACE EDUCATION
area are just some of the typical
IN EUROPE IS SET TO
main topics of classical courses
ROLL ON WELL INTO THE
in this category. To do this, stuENVISAGED “KNOWLEDGE
dents are taught photogramAND INNOVATION SOCIETY.”
metry, image interpretation
and geospatial/image processing software. Courses relevant
to the aerospace domain are
found, but the offered degrees largely overlap with geography and Earth science subjects. Many offers of this
type were found, each with a different level of specialization, across all the considered European countries.
This category was mostly reported within a science
department/faculty/school and, for example, it is present at: University of Cambridge, University of Oxford,
University of Leicester, University of Reading, Imperial College London, University of Lausanne, Polytechnic of Zurich, University of Extremadura, Polytechnic
of Madrid, University of Hannover, University of Trier,
32
TUM (Munich polytechnic University), University of
Karlsruhe, University of Paris “Pantheon Sorbonne”,
University of Rennes, University of Amsterdam, University of Twente and University of Aalto.
In addition to the three categories above, where aerospace is the rationale or at least a major driver, we frequently found what we may add as a fourth, minor type.
This consists of generic degrees in telecommunication
Engineering which include one or a few courses relevant to aerospace. This type of MSc provides a basic
knowledge in all communications and signal processing
subjects, included some within aerospace (e.g. processing
of remotely sensed data, long-range antennas, …). The
typical pattern shows very few courses regarding Remote
Sensing, radar techniques and image processing, together
with deepening of digital/optical communication, system
and communication network, antennas and EM propagation and coding techniques. Usually, these degrees are
proposed by small-to medium-sized universities, with
some exceptions. For example University of Valencia,
Polytechnic of Catalunya, Polytechnic of Lausanne, University of Sheffield, University of Pavia (until last year),
University of Trento, University of Karlsruhe and University of Delft choose to offer this type of MSc course.
The three main types of courses can be summarized in
a simplified scheme like the one we depicted in Figure 5.
Disciplines that were not found frequently are space
exploration and deep space observation. These are sometimes found in physics curricula (e.g. University of Oslo,
University of Leicester), but are usually dealt with extensively in PhD courses.
As we have shown, there are lots of common lines in
European technical education in aerospace; though, each
country shows peculiar characteristics. In Italy, for example, aerospace education is almost always found within
engineering MSc tracks, in “Aerospace Hardware” and
“Aerospace Software” groups, but also in the generic telecommunication Engineering, which is offered very often.
By contrast, in Germany the most frequent degree related
to Aerospace is of the “Geography and environmental”
type, although we can find some degrees belonging to
the first type. Quite similar to Germany is the situation
in Switzerland and France, although the latter offers more
“Aerospace Software” than “Aerospace Hardware”. In UK
all of the three types are well represented, although the first
one prevails. Tracks were found offering deep insight into
Aerospace structures. In Spain, in the Netherlands and in
Scandinavian countries track types are evenly represented.
After the MSc, students may attend a specializing Master in the aerospace field. Not only universities but also
private institutes offer this chance, which however was
found not to be too frequent. Master courses do often
add the economic and management side of aerospace
missions to an in-depth analysis some aerospace technical topics. The presence of this post-graduate Master
courses is generally connected to research activities in the
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Aerospace Teaching on ...
“Hardware”
“Environmental
Applications”
“Software”
FIGURE 5. The main types of “aerospace/remote sensing” MSc
courses offered across the European Universities.
With this paper we plan to draw a first, rough picture of
how higher aerospace education is generally interpreted
across Europe, in preparation of a future, more in-depth
work including volumes and employment perspectives.
We may naturally have oversimplified the scenario and
may be missing important pieces of information here;
one of the purposes of this paper is to raise the issue and
encourage readers to provide a feedback to the authors
with the aim of getting to a more complete picture of the
“aerospace education situation” across Europe.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support
of the University of Pavia under the form of a “Tirocinio
Formativo Curriculare” grant assigned to Luca Pasca for
his work.
REFERENCES
organizing universities but also to industry interest and
funding or co-funding.
5. CONCLUSIONS
An extensive review across Europe of MSc university tracks
relevant to the aerospace sector was carried out in search
for overall and country-specific patterns. 50 Universities
and 150 tracks were examined to find three main types of
aerospace/remote sensing tracks, plus one additional type
where aerospace/remote sensing plays a minor role. These
types are found across all of the considered European
countries. Differences were mainly found in terms of how
frequently each type is offered to the students.
We are facing a trend towards making the European
education system increasingly standardized across the different countries (European Commission, 2013), as well as
towards fostering the international mobility of students
(European Commission, 2009). In this context, we might
state that aerospace education in Europe is set to roll on
well into the envisaged “knowledge and innovation society” (European Commission, 2010); at least, this is true
as far as education is conceived as a self- standing activity, i.e. ignoring its practical purpose of providing suitably
prepared manpower to the foreseeable industry demand.
One of the limitations of this work is, indeed, that it
does not take into account the presence and impact of
potential employers on each national educational system.
A second limitation, partly connected to the first one, is
that no account was made of the actual number of students choosing each of the analyzed tracks; such information is difficult to obtain and would have required a gigantic scale-up in the effort that was not bearable at this stage.
MARCH 2014
[1] 4 International Colleges & Universities. (2013, Dec. 29). Universities in Europe. [Online]. Available: http://www.4icu.org/Europe/
[2] European Commission 329. (2009, July 8). Green paper: Promoting the learning mobility of young people [Online]. Available:
http://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelong-learning-policy/doc/mo____________________________________
bility/com329_en.pdf
____________
[3]European Commission 546. (2010,Oct.6). Europe 2020 Flagship Initiative Innovation Union [Online]. Available: http://eur-lex.europa.
eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2010:0546:FIN:EN:PDF
___________________________________
[4] European Commission. (2013, Dec. 20). The Bologna process—Towards the European higher education area [Online].
Available: http://ec.europa.eu/education/higher-education/
bologna_en.htm
__________
[5] (1994, Jan. 3). EEA 1992: Agreement on the European economic
area. [Online]. Available: http://ec.europa.eu/world/agreements/
downloadFile.do?fullText=yes&treatyTransId=448
____________________________
[6] (2014, Jan. 3). EHEA 2010: The European Higher Education Area
Official Website. [Online]. Available: http://www.ehea.info/
[7] J. Hattie and H. W. Marsh, “The relationship between research
and teaching: A meta-analysis,” Rev. Educ. Res., vol. 66, no. 4, pp.
507–542, 1996.
[8] (2013). Scopus claims being the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. [Online]. Available: http://www.
scopus.com/
GRS
Concluding Remarks
I would also like to remind the community of our quest for recently
published Ph.D. theses. For publishing the Ph.D. thesis information
you can contact Michael Inggs ([email protected])
__________ or Dr. Lorenzo
Bruzzone ([email protected]).
___________ Ph.D. dissertations should be in
the fields of activity of IEEE GRSS and should be recently completed.
Please provide us with the following: title of the dissertation, the students and advisors names, the date of the thesis defense or publication, and a link for downloading the electronic version of the thesis.
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BOOK REVIEW
CLAUDIA NOTARNICOLA,
EURAC-Institute for Applied Remote Sensing, Bolzano, Italy
Land Surface Observation,
Modeling and Data Assimilation
L
and Surface Observation, Modeling and Data Assimilation is a book devoted to data assimilation methodologies. The book covers a wide range of topics in 464
pages and 14 chapters including detailed descriptions of
both methodologies and applications and is based on
lecture notes from the Summer School and Workshop
on Land Data Assimilation held in July 2010 at the Beijing Normal University, China.
Edited by Shunlin Liang, Xin Li,
and Xianhong Xie
World Scientific Publishing Co.
Pte. Ltd, January 2013,
ISBN: 978-981-4472-60-9
A variety of both applications and methods are treated. The book provides an overview of the methodologies used in data assimilation such as Ensemble Kalman
filter and multi-scale Kalman Smoother-Based framework. Moreover, attention is devoted to open issues in
particular the estimation of model and observation errors providing some approaches to solve the problem.
The book is divided in four main parts. The first three
parts focus on the main components in a data assimilation experiment that is remote sensed observations and
data products, land surface modeling, and data assimilation techniques. The fourth part is dedicated to appliDigital Object Identifier 10.1109/MGRS.2014.2304631
34
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cation in the domain of climate prediction, hydrology
and agricultural monitoring.
The Part 1 of the book named “Observation” includes
3 chapters which introduce the readers to data needed
and available for Land Surface Data Assimilation. These
chapters are particularly useful as they provide a complete overview of the input data in terms atmospheric
forcing data, Land Surface parameters (e.g. albedo, Leaf
area index). Moreover, chapter 2 and 3 provides a complete overview of the existing satellite products which
can be exploited for the applications at global and regional scale.
The first chapter addresses the available data sets
and products useful for data assimilation. These data
sets include atmospheric data, land surface products
and model parameterizations. It provides an overview
of methods how to derive the presented products. The
chapter indicates as well issues that need further improvement such as the influence of cloud on optical
remote sensing products.
Chapter 2 introduces the Second-generation PolarOrbiting Meteorological Satellite of China, Fengyun 3
satellite series. These satellites carry 11 sensors working
from the ultraviolet to microwave spectrum. They share
similar characteristics to other sensors on the platform
TERRA and AQUA and can be used jointly in order to
increase the data availability for different global and regional applications. The chapter introduces to the main
technology on board of these satellites including ground
segment. Another part of the chapter is dedicated to the
standard products (Level 2 and 3) and some main applications such as ozone and air quality monitoring.
Chapter 3 is dedicated to the NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) program. The NASA systems are arranged in order to provide plenty of data from level-0
(Source data) to Level-4 data which are the geophysical variables derived from different instruments. Along
with products NASA provides land assimilation model
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systems (GLDAS) that integrates satellite and ground measurements, using land surface modelling and data assimilation techniques. The main aim is to generate optimal
fields of land surface parameters such as soil moisture, soil
temperature and evapotranspiration. The chapter provides
also plenty of details about how to access data and how to
use on-line visualization tools to have a quick view of the
data before downloading. Among the others, one of the
most versatile is called Giovanni (http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.
gov/giovanni/) where data can be visualized and analyzed
on line.
The Part 2 of the book is dedicated to the modeling aspects introducing two main classes of models: the Land
Surface Model and the Hydrological Model.
Land Surface Models (LSMs) are introduced in chapter 4
where the focus is on dry lands and high-elevation regions.
These are particularly sensitive to climate change and moreover they deserve a specific attention because the land-atmosphere interactions are not clearly understood yet. In
fact this chapter addresses main open issues in modeling
such as thermal coupling between land and atmosphere in
dry lands, and soil stratification beneath alpine grassland.
For these issues, the latest developments are presented and
the improvements in land surface models are discussed.
Chapter 5 presents a review of parameterization and parameters estimation of hydrological models. Hydrological
models have largely improved in the last decades especially
towards advance parameter estimation methods. The chapter illustrates the basic concepts as well as the latest trends
of hydrological modeling. The core part of the chapter is
the review of parameter estimation methods where different global optimization algorithms for calibrating hydrological model are presented including latest developments
on distributed hydrological models. These latest models
need new methods to deal with high-dimensional parameter space.
The Part 3 of the book deals with data assimilation techniques and related issues such as error estimation in land
data assimilation systems. Part 3 is made up of 5 chapters
and represents the main focus of the book.
Chapter 6 is dedicated to an overview of theories and
methods of data assimilation and specifically to applications in land surface studies. With data assimilation methods, observations are continuously inserted in model states
by taking advantages of constrains of physical models. The
advantages and disadvantages of different techniques such
as recursive Bayesian filter, Kalman and Ensemble Kalman
filters are presented. Two case studies on assimilation for
soil temperature are introduced as applications. Moreover, the chapter concludes indicating that thanks to the
increasing observations availability, developments of new
and effective methods are required in order to improve the
reliability of systems and achieve a multi-scale information fusion.
Chapter 7 addresses a key point in data assimilation
methodologies, the estimation of model and observation
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errors. The authors illustrate what could be the impact of
poor error assumption on the performance of land data
assimilation systems. After the presentation of a theoretical background of the problem, the chapter reviews the
recent development of adaptive filtering systems which
try to estimate modeling and observation error covariance information.
Chapter 8 deals with the adaptive inflation scheme for
adjusting the forecast error covariance matrix and prior
observation error covariance matrix in ensemble Kalman
filter assimilation. This method is a specific algorithm to
estimate the inflation factor of forecast error covariance
matrix by optimization of the likelihood function of innovation (that is observation minus forecast residuals). The
cases of time-dependent and time-independent inflation
are discussed. All the inflation adjustment methods discussed require linear or tangent linear observation operator. The use of different operators is highlighted as a next
step in this topic.
Chapter 9 provides an overview of error estimation in
Land Data Assimilation Systems. As already pointed out in
the previous chapters error estimation is a key point for improving the performances of data assimilation systems. The
review addresses three main parts, model input estimation
error, model parameter error estimation and model structural error estimation by indicating different approaches
such as multiplicative inflation and additive inflations.
Moreover, a new method is proposed based on evolutionary concepts in particular cross-over principles. When
compared with other existing methods, this approach can
determine improved results. Future investigations will be
in the direction of using such methods in real land data assimilation systems in order to solve the assimilation problems with real observations.
Chapter 10 introduces a framework named Multi-scale
Kalman Smoother-based (MKS) that is a modification of
the traditional Kalman filter. This method is used to estimate the probability distribution of hydrological variables
given model predictions, observations and MKS parameters. One of the most important applications in the context
of data assimilation can be obtained when observations
from different scales are available. The estimation of the
MKS parameters is obtained through an Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm. This framework is presented as
well through a numerical example.
The Part 4 of the book is dedicated to applications and is
made up of 4 chapters.
Chapter 11 provides an overview of the North America
Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS), a system that
runs multiple land surface models (LSMs) such as the Noah,
Mosaic, Sacramento Soil Moisture Accounting (SAC-SMA)
and the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) models over
the continental USA to generate long-term hourly, 1/8th
degree hydrological and meteorological products. These
LSMs have generated land surface products including water fluxes (evaporation, runoff/streamflow), energy fluxes
35
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(net radiation, sensible heat flux, latent heat flux, ground
heat flux) and state products (soil moisture, snow cover, soil
temperature, skin temperature). The first phase of the system was initiated in 1998 and the second phase in 2006 and
is currently running. This second phase includes, among
the others, upgrading forcing data, intercomparison studies, seasonal hydrological forecast and real-time monitoring mode.
Chapter 12 introduces recent studies on soil moisture
data assimilation for state initialization of seasonal climate
prediction. The assimilation of soil moisture is quite recent
but rapid progress has been made thanks to the availability
of remotely sensed soil moisture data and well developed
and robust assimilation methodologies. The chapter starts
with a brief history of soil moisture data assimilation and
the related basic concepts. Subsequently the study focuses
on the recent progress made with a case study of soil moisture initialization activities for the NASA’s seasonal and
internannual climate prediction. The chapter concludes indicating that future advancements on the current soil moisture data assimilation is required to include multi-source
hydrological remote sensing data into LSMs in order to
have improved climate predictions.
Chapter 13 describes the assimilation scheme for Crop
Simulation Models (CSM) in the context of agricultural
studies. The chapter starts with a general introduction on
the assimilation scheme for CSM and of the Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT). Differ-
Fawwaz T. Ulaby
David G. Long
NEWLY PUBLISHED
Microwave
Radar and Radiometric
Remote Sensing
The 1000-page book covers
theoretical models, system design
and operation, and geoscientific
applications of both active and
passive microwave remote sensing
systems.
NOVEMBER 2013
William Blackwell, Charles Elachi, Adrian Fung, Chris Ruf,
Kamal Sarabandi, Howard Zebker, and Jakob van Zyl
36
ent assimilation schemes are described as well as remote
sensing data in solar, microwave and thermal domains. In
particular the quality of remote sensing data is critical for
data assimilation studies. The main issues to be solved in
the remote sensing community are the data uncertainties
and mixed pixels. On the other side further developments
are needed for better crop model parameterizations and regional crop model development.
Chapter 14 presents another application of the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) to the state parameter estimation
in hydrological models. The presented state-augmentation
technique is able to estimate simultaneously dynamic states
and model parameters. The technique is applied in the case
of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model by assimilating runoff and other measurements. In this chapter
further improvements are also addressed and in particular
much attention shall be devoted to modeling and observation error estimation. Moreover, specific strategies shall
include also how to assimilate various observation types
such as remote sensing data and in-situ measurements. This
latest is quite important to reduce as much as possible the
uncertainties in hydrological predictions.
As conclusive remarks, it is worthwhile pointing out that
the book presents an extended state-of-the-art description
on data assimilation methodologies and at the same time
is able to draw a picture of the future trends in this topic
as well as envisaged further developments. Thanks to this
combination there is a wide range of potentially interested
To order online:
www.press.umich.edu
MARCH 2014
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readers. The acknowledge goes to Editors and to Authors for
the excellent job in covering both a wide range of topics and
in addressing main issues in further developments.
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Claudia Notarnicola received the Degree in Physics, summa
cum laude, and the PhD in Physics from the University of
Bari (Italy) in 1995 and 2002 respectively. She is presently
the vice-head of the EURAC-Institute of Applied Remote
Sensing (Bolzano, Italy). Within the same institute she is
leader of a group dealing with remote sensing applications
in SAR and optical domain for soil and vegetation monitoring as well as integration of remotely sensed observations with models and ground measurements. Her main
research interest includes biophysical parameters (soil
moisture, vegetation, snow) retrieval by using optical and
SAR images, optical and SAR data processing, data fusion
and electromagnetic models. She conducts research on
these topics within the frameworks of several national and
international projects. Among the others, she is involved in
the Cassini-Huygens Project for the application of inversion
procedure to the estimation of Titan surface parameters.
She is a referee for IEEE and other international journals
and since 2006, she serves as Conference Chairs for SPIE
International Conference on “SAR Image Analysis, Modeling and Techniques”.
GRS
PRRS 2014
8th IAPR Workshop on Pattern
Recognition in Remote Sensing
(in conjunction with ICPR 2014)
August 24, 2014
Stockholm, Sweden
PRRS 2014 Chairs:
Jenny Q. Du, Mississippi State University, USA
Eckart Michaelsen, Fraunhofer IOSB, Germany
Bing Zhang, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Abstract submission:
March 31, 2014
Email: [email protected]
Notification of acceptance:
April 30, 2014
Early Registration:
May 21, 2014
Web Address:
http://iapr-tc7.de/prrs/PRRS2014.htm
http://www.icpr2014.org
Call for Papers
2014 IEEE Radar Conference:
From Sensing to Information
19-23 May 2014
10 th European Conference on
Synthetic Aperture Radar
Cincinnati, Ohio (USA)
Cincinnati Marriott at RiverCenter
03-05 June 2014 - Berlin, Germany
Tutorials: 02 June 2014
EUSAR is Europe's leading forum dedicated to SAR
techniques, technology and applications related technologies
with an international audience. We invite you to participate
in this world-class scientific event by submitting a paper.
This will be a unique opportunity for you to present your
research results, innovations and technologies to the world.
Draft Paper Submission Deadline:
October 31, 2014
Call for Exhibition and Sponsoring:
Please refer to www.eusar.de for details.
EUSAR 2014 General Chair: Manfred Zink, DLR
EUSAR 2014 Technical Chair: Gerhard Krieger, DLR
General Chair:
Prof. Brian Rigling – Wright State University
Technical Chair:
Dr. Muralidhar Rangaswamy – US Air Force Research Lab
GRSS Liaison:
Prof. Joel Johnson – The Ohio State University
Abstract submission: 18 October 2013
(Up to 4 pages with figures)
Author notification: 20 January 2014
Final papers: 21 February 2014
(Up to 6 pages with figures)
Web Address:
http://www.radarcon2014.org
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WOMEN IN GRS
GAIL SKOFRONICK JACKSON,
GRSS Liaison to IEEE Women in Engineering
I
n this issue, we are highlighting the career of a GRSS
senior woman remote sensing scientist and oceanographer, Sonia Gallegos. Dr. Gallegos, who works at
the Naval Research Laboratory at Stennis Space Center, conducts research using data from satellite and
airborne sensors and in situ measurements for oceanographic applications. Her research focuses on the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with the ocean
and optical properties of the atmosphere required
for retrieval of sea surface temperature, heat flux, oil
thickness, toxic algal blooms, water clarity, and sediment content.
Sonia was born in Quito, Ecuador. She was raised
in New York City and received the B.S. in Biology-Pre
Med from the City University of New York. Upon taking a class in Marine Geology at
the Bermuda Biological Station,
she fell in love with the ocean, and
EXPERIENCES RANGE
left to obtain a Master in Marine
FROM DEVELOPING AND
Science at the University of Puerto
IMPLEMENTING
Rico in Mayaguez. Upon graduALGORITHMS TO
ation, she was hired as a Marine
LEADING REGIONAL
extension agent by the University
of Puerto Rico-NOAA Sea Grant
STUDIES OF WATER
program. (She fondly refers to this
CLARITY IN THE YELLOW
as her original dream job). While
SEA, THE PERSIAN GULF,
gaining extensive experience with
AND THE GULF OF
oceanographic field work in the
THAILAND.
Caribbean, Sonia became interested in the new technologies to
which she became exposed during
her tenure at Sea Grant. She opted to pursue a doctorate in Oceanography at Texas A&M University, funded
by a Commonwealth of Puerto Rico Economic Development Administration scholarship. Upon completDigital Object Identifier 10.1109/MGRS.2014.2304132
38
ing the required core courses at A&M she was granted
an internship at the NOAA/NESDIS Climatic Environmental Assessment Division at NASA Johnson Space
Center, Houston, TX, where she was introduced to satellite imagery and became part of a team that monitored land-vegetation growth and health from AVHRR
and Landsat Data in support of the interagency AgRISTARS program. Sonia continued to work with NOAA
in satellite ocean applications for the next six years,
leaving only to accept a full time job as a Principal
Investigator at the Naval Research Laboratory at Stennis Space Center.
As a satellite oceanographer, Sonia’s experiences
have ranged from developing and implementing algorithms to provide accurate retrievals of Sea Surface
Temperature to leading regional studies of water clarity in the Yellow Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Gulf
of Thailand. She has collaborated with international
researchers, including Korean and Chinese colleagues,
to develop satellite-based sediment algorithms, linking satellite data, numerical model products, and
in-situ databases for hourly estimation of 3D optical
depths. She developed and transitioned the first operational optical-environmental model to the U.S. Navy
to determine the depth of light penetration. She has
also evaluated the impact of hurricanes on the optical backscattering coefficient of the Gulf of Mexico
and the Philippines. She has collaborated with NOAA
and NASA in developing a fully automated system for
tracking oil spills utilizing optical and SAR data—the
system was used in the Deep Water Horizon oil spill
incident in the Gulf of Mexico. With the availability of
suitable optical data from multiple sensors, Sonia is
currently helping to develop and implement satellite
data fusion algorithms using MODIS, VIIRS, GOCI
and HICO and working with Alabama A&M University to develop a holographic laser technique to determine the thickness of oil spills.
MARCH 2014
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One of the most interesting aspects of Sonia’s career is
that the remote sensing based research has been conducted
against a backdrop of greater than 20 years of field campaigns, with more than 50 cruises on board university,
U.S. government, NATO, and international vessels from
Chile, Korea, and China. Barely more than 5’ tall, she has
deployed her instrumentation all over the world.
During her career, Sonia has also been a mentor to students in the U.S. and abroad. Shown below, she is showing students how to measure remote sensing reflectance
with a sensor developed by faculty at the University of S.
Florida. She has engaged as a Latin American liaison to
the GRSS for many years and was instrumental in establishment of the first student chapter of GRSS in Colombia and is a popular speaker at universities. As the remote
MARCH 2014
sensing of the world’s oceans
advances with the launch of
REMOTE SENSING BASED
new satellites, development of
RESEARCH CONDUCTED
sensors, and increase in comAGAINST A BACKDROP OF
putational capability, women
such as Sonia Gallegos are
GREATER THAN 20 YEARS
making major contributions
OF FIELD CAMPAIGNS,
to our profession. She also
WITH MORE THAN 50
encourages young women to
CRUISES.
consider careers that combine
the popular fields of biology
and chemistry with technology and to pursue careers in optical remote sensing of
the oceans.
GRS
39
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CONFERENCE REPORTS
International Experts Meet on
Microwave Remote Sensing
16–17 December 2013, Ahmedabad
I
EEE-GRSS Gujarat Chapter in association with CEPT
University, Ahmedabad organized two days “International Experts Meet on Microwave Remote Sensing”
at Gujarat University Convention Centre, Ahmedabad
during 16–17 December 2013. The event was supported
and co-sponsored by PLANEX, Physical Research Laboratory; IEEE Gujarat Section APS/MTT joint chapter;
Indian Society of Geomatics—Ahmedabad chapter;
Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO); International Center for Radio Science (ICRS), Jodhpur.
The meeting was attended by nearly 70 participants
from various institutions including an array of dignitaries from India and abroad. The prominent among
them were:
◗ Prof. Wolfgang-Martin Boerner (Univ. of Illinois at
Chicago (USA) and IEEE-GRSS Asia-Pacific Liaison)
◗ Dr. Gerhard Koeing (President, ISPRS, Germany)
◗ Dr. F.J. Behr (Stuttgart Univ. of Applied Sciences,
Stuttgart, Germany)
◗ Dr. Dietrich Schroder (Stuttgart Univ. of Applied Sciences, Stuttgart, Germany)
◗ Prof. O.P.N. Calla (Chairman, IEEE-GRSS Delhi
Chapter and Director, ICRS, Jodhpur)
◗ Dr. Shiv Mohan (Chairman, IEEE-GRSS Gujarat
Chapter and Visiting Scientist, PLANEX, PRL)
◗ Dr. Ajai (Prof. Brahma Prakash Chair, SAC, ISRO).
Students, Researchers, Scientists, Faculty and executives from different institutions and industry participated in the Meet. The institutional participation
includes:
◗ Space Applications Centre (ISRO), Ahmedabad
◗ Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (ISRO), Dehradun
◗ Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad
◗ CEPT University, Ahmedabad
◗ University of Illinois, USA
◗ University of Applied Science, Stuttgart, Germany
40
Dignitaries Inaugurating joint session of AGSE’2013 and IEEE-GRSS
International Experts Meet.
Release of Proceeding of International Experts Meet at the joint
inaugural session.
Participants of IEEE-GRSS International Experts Meet.
◗
◗
◗
◗
◗
◗
Italian National Research Council, Italy
International Centre of Radio Science, Jodhpur
Nirma University, Ahmedabad
Gujarat University, Ahmedabad
Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University, Gadhinagar
M.S. University, Vadodara
MARCH 2014
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Discussion during a Technical Session.
Panel Discussion on Microwave Remote Sensing applications for
Earth Sciences.
Felicitation of the guest speakers.
A view from the Cultural Programme.
Felicitation of guest speaker.
◗
◗
◗
◗
◗
◗
◗
◗
◗
◗
◗
St. Xavier’s College, Ahmedabad
Anna University, Chennai
M.G. Science College, Ahmedabad
Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, Mumbai
Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Dr. BAM University, Aurngabad, Maharashtra
Indian Geomatics Research Institute, Ahmedabad
Nascent Info Technologies Pvt. Ltd., Ahmedabad
Scanpoint Geomatics Limited, Ahmedabad
Radar System & Solutions, New Delhi.
The inaugural function of the International Experts
meet on Microwave Remote sensing was held jointly with
International Conference on Geospatial Momentum for
Society and Environment (AGSE 2013). The expert meet
started with a plenary talk by Prof. W-M Boerner, the
Guest of Honor and release of proceeding of the Interna-
MARCH 2014
tional Meet by the dignitaries. The expert meet provided
the students, researchers, scientist and academicians an
opportunity to interact with top leaders and experts of
microwave remote sensing applications. There were total
10 invited talks on various aspects of Microwave Remote
Sensing Applications for Earth and planetary sciences. In
addition, ten contributory technical papers (7 on Earth
sciences and 3 on planetary sciences) were presented.
There were two presentations by corporate sector. The
Expert Meet concluded with a high note to spread knowledge sharing through more such activities and developing
IEEE-GRSS regional chapters.
Following are some of the important issues discussed
in the meeting:
◗ Availability of data and advanced technology to researchers
◗ Common platform for Indian GRSS chapters
◗ Organize regional workshop on specific theme.
◗ Organization of training course at different level
◗ Frequent Interaction with experts in the field of interest.
◗ Wider coverage for popularizing the science and
technology.
GRS
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INDUSTRIAL PROFILES
ALEXANDER KAPTEIN, JÜRGEN JANOTH, OLIVER LANG, AND NOEMIE BERNEDE
Airbus Defence and Space, Geo-Intelligence
Trends in Commercial Radar
Remote Sensing Industry
T
42
he last two decades have seen an unprecedented
development in the satellite-based Earth observation industry. The combination of an increasing number of operational satellites, the higher resolution of
the acquired data and the advances in the processing
techniques have enabled a wider adoption of satellite
data and the development of a diverse range of products and applications.
Although the market is still strongly biased toward
electro-optically derived imagery a rising tide of
acceptance and usage of satellite derived Synthetic
Aperture Radar (SAR) data can be noticed over the last
few years. This trend is a result of the increasing availability of commercial SAR satellite data, development
of sophisticated processing and analysis tools and
industry driven training effort conducted to familiarize image analysts with the specifics of SAR imagery,
its interpretation and its utility.
Intuitively the colored imagery derived from electro-optical systems provides the human eyes with
familiar representations of the Earth’s surface. However, the user community is increasingly recognizing
that there is much more than meets the eye in blackand-white SAR data and imagery. The most obvious
SAR advantage is the weather and daylight independence of radar systems, which ensures a guaranteed
acquisition of the area of interest.
This however is just one side of the coin. The real
advantages of SAR unfold when the data is processed
and analyzed in an appropriate manner. Many unique
effects of SAR satellite data (such as phase information)
can be exploited to extract information from the imagery
that is not detectable through visual interpretation only.
SAR imagery can for instance be used to detect and even
quantify the motion of objects on both land and sea or
to monitor subtle changes to the surface conditions.
The current operational SAR missions have proven
that commercial radar remote sensing has a considerable commercial potential. The demand from both
institutional and commercial data users continues to
drive advances in sensor technology and processing
techniques to ensure another leap ahead in regards to
data quality and availability.
In the next decade over 360 Earth observation satellites are expected to be launched by government and
commercial operators1 across 42 countries (36 are SAR
satellite), enabling the development of improved and
novel space-based applications as well as the advancement of existing applications.
The SAR data market is growing particularly fast
increasing from 93 Mio € in 2013 to 226 Mio € in 2021
(CAGR 2011–2021: 9.76%). According to the Northern
Sky Research Study “Satellite based Earth Observation, 5th Edition” the high-resolution SAR data market represented 3% of the total data market in 2012,
the medium-resolution data segment was worth 6%
of the total data market in 2012. The growth for radar
data is driven by public budgets and procurement
mechanisms that are implemented by the defence sector and by consumer driven applications.
Primary applications for radar data are defense and
maritime applications such as border surveillance, oil
spill, ship and ice monitoring. SAR data is also used
for land applications (geology, agriculture) and infrastructure management (e.g. surface movement monitoring). Used in combination with optical data, radar
data provides advanced opportunities regarding information content. An integrated use of radar and optical sensors can support timely change identification
through analysis of the weather-independent radar
image and then subsequent identification of changes
using the optical sensors.
1Satellite-Based Earth Observation, Market Prospects to 2022,
Euroconsult 2013.
MARCH 2014
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Demands and requirements from novel applications
and increased uptake of SAR imagery are the key drivers
to technology and service developments. Satellite builders, operators and data providers continuously strive to
upgrade their space and ground infrastructures to meet the
increasing demands of data users both in the institutional
and the commercial market sectors. A few major trends
in regards to advances in the SAR sensor technology and
novel developments in terms of applications and services
based on radar data are highlighted in the following.
PLATFORMS TAILORED TO RESPECTIVE
USER REQUIREMENTS
A first distinct trend of the last years is the growing
interest of small and developing nations in the use of
space systems and applications for the benefit of their
socio-economic development. Since the 1990’s, various
developed and emerging countries have drafted their
own national space plan. From 2001 to 2011, the number of nations with space programmes has grown from
26 to 492.
In addition to other space programs (e.g. in the satcom domain), these nations are increasingly thriving to
establish their own remote sensing satellite capabilities.
The main rationale is usually to establish an independent
data acquisition capacity to improve civil security and
quality of live. For these newcomers it is challenging to
enter this domain as the countries need to leverage high
development/operation costs, the long-term dimension
of programs, the limited experience with identification of
requirements and priorities as well as the expected return
on investment.
For these reasons, the first systems with which these
nations enter the spaceborne remote sensing domain are
usually low-cost systems that can be launched quickly.
Such systems enable the nations to start building knowledge of space programs and provide a direct return at economic and social level. Data acquired by these systems
is mainly used for disaster management, monitoring of
natural resources and mapping applications. In addition
to the application-based benefits such systems foster the
technology transfer into these developing nations and
enable them to gain experience in the operation and
exploitation of space systems.
On a next level emerging space nations obtain highend instruments to enhance platforms that are integrated
based on proprietary technology in the country. An
example would be the recently launched KOMPSAT-5 satellite, developed and managed by the Korean Aerospace
Research Center KARI. The design, development and integration of the satellite bus are led by KARI supported by
the national aerospace industry. Experiences from previous programs (KOMPSAT-1/KOMPSAT-2/KOMPSAT-3)
are exploited to enhance the new satellite bus. The X-Band
2Euroconsult, 2012, Profiles of Government Space Programs.
MARCH 2014
FIGURE 1. Surface movement monitoring using TerraSAR-X radar
satellite data for an underground construction project in Budapest,
Hungary. © 2011 Airbus Defence and Space/Infoterra GmbH.
SAR payload however was subcontracted to Thales Alenia
Space of Italy.
At the other end of the scale mature space nations are
expanding their space programs and improve the quality
and exploitation of their space systems. Depending on
the respective space strategies, the countries follow different implementation roads to achieve their strategic goals.
These countries increasingly implement complex mission
concepts such as different constellation approaches or
even formation flights (e.g. the world’s first operational
very close formation flight was implemented with the
German TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X satellites that fly
at distances of down to a few hundred meters). Another
development are novel schemes to finance the Earth
observation programs, such as commercialisation of the
data (as done in the TerraSAR-X program) or dual use missions such as Cosmo-Skymed. Another way for nations to
satisfy their increasing demand for spaceborne data and
leverage limited financial budgets are Government-toGovernment bartering agreements. By this, nations can
substitute capabilities that are not available in-country
through in-kind exchanges with other nations, benefiting
from possibly advanced technologies available elsewhere
and getting access to state-of-the-art data sources that they
would not be able to finance themselves.
A further increase of SAR data usage can be expected
from the Sentinel-1 satellites, to be launched in the
upcoming years. As part of the European Copernicus
programme these satellites will provide free mediumresolution SAR satellite data. On the one hand, this will
stimulate SAR data exploitation, but it also entails, that
commercial data providers will have to adapt to this new
situation and identify niche markets (e.g. very-high resolution data provision) that cannot be serviced by the Sentinel satellites.
43
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TerraSAR-X Image - 07 Dec 2011
TerraSAR-X Image - 01 Nov 2012
Detected
Damage
SPOT 5 Image - 11 Jan 2003 © CNES 2003
Distribution Astrium Services/Spot Image S.A.
Amplitude Change Detection - 07 Dec 2011 vs. 01 Nov 2012
FIGURE 2. Change analysis based on EO and SAR satellite data following Hurricane Sandy in Long Island, New York, USA. © 2013 Airbus
Defence and Space/Infoterra GmbH.
TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENTS
Technological development is key to the increased use
and exploitation of radar remote sensing systems. Increasingly sophisticated requirements for complex applications such as high-frequency automated change detection
or accurate wide-area monitoring drive the innovation on
the technology side.
A) HIGH-RESOLUTION WIDE-SWATH
(HRWS) CAPABILITIES
One advanced concept that directly answers the widespread user need for large area coverage (e.g. for maritime monitoring) is the development of High-Resolution
Wide-Swath (HRWS) capabilities. While current phasedarray SAR systems offer flexibility regarding operational
modes, e.g. StripMap, SpotLight, ScanSAR, users often
have to accept a trade-off between ground resolution and
ground coverage, i.e. a decision between acquisitions of
smaller scenes with high resolution vs. large area surveillance modes providing medium to low resolution.
SAR systems of the future, such as the HRWS concept by Airbus Defence and Space, will introduce Digital
Beam-forming techniques to overcome these restrictions.
The SAR antenna will be partitioned in flight (azimuth)
and height (elevation) direction, related to independent
radar channels. By this, multiple signals are received for
each radar transmit pulse, allowing for the reduction of
the physical pulse repetition frequency, facilitating wide
swath coverage maintaining high resolution. In effect,
44
the azimuth resolution can be much finer than the wellknown relation “azimuth resolution equals approximately half the antenna length”. Elevation Digital Beamforming can be used to improve instrument sensitivity
by real-time focusing of the antenna beam to the current
target on the ground.
Enhanced concepts carry these techniques further,
e.g. by multi-beam modes or by the option to process
the same data with respect to different applications, e.g.
imaging versus moving target detection.
Ultimately HRWS will allow a much greater flexibility
when defining acquisition modes. Thus facilitating the
optimization of image geometry for the respective application requirements.
B) MULTI-POLARIMETRY
Another technological advancement is the increased
adoption of multi-polarimetry. Multi-polarized SAR
data allows the user to measure the polarization properties of a target and not simply the backscatter at a single
polarization. Usage of polarimetric-data can be divided
into variety of land cover or target recognition categories,
such as agriculture, forest land cover, ice-classification,
maritime research (ship detection, wind speed, sea-cover
(oil)), vehicle detection or urban land cover. The propagation planes of radar signals at different polarizations
(vertical (V) and horizontal (H)) interact dissimilarly
with target structures of different dielectric properties.
Thus the combination of the polarimetric responses
results in a false color image, which provides improved
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classification information of e.g. vegetation classes. Full
polarimetry can furthermore support target identification and improve accuracy of urban area mapping applications. Future SAR systems such as Cosmo Skymed Second Generation and TerraSAR-X Next Generation will
feature such full polarimetry capabilities.
C) INCREASED BANDWIDTH
Another development currently under way is the intended
extension of the chirp bandwidth for X-Band SAR from
600 MHz to 1200 MHz. The pursued extension of the ITU
bandwidth allocation to 1,200 MHz bandwidth, necessary
to achieve very high resolution, has been adopted as topic
for approval on the agenda of the next World Radio Conference in 2015. This will enable the acquisition of X-band
SAR imagery with a resolution down to 25 cm—a quantum
leap in image quality. The improved resolution facilitates
the more intuitive analysis of the imagery as even small
scaled objects are recognizable and identifiable easily.
NEAR-REAL-TIME SERVICE CAPABILITIES
A key requirement for many SAR applications is the timely
availability and delivery of data to the end user. Particularly monitoring applications such as Open Ocean Surveillance and disaster management require instant data
availability to take full advantage of remote sensing data.
The timeliness of the data is influenced by two factors,
firstly the rapid access to the target area and secondly the
instant download and delivery of the data to the end user.
Various strategies are pursued to achieve an increased
temporal resolution and an expansion of Near-Real-Time
(NRT) service capabilities.
A) SATELLITE CONSTELLATIONS
Depending on the number of satellites and their orbit
positions satellite constellations enable daily and even
intra-daily revisit capacities to any point on Earth. The
only currently operational commercial SAR constellation is Cosmo-Skymed with four identical satellites in
orbit. However, for the next generation of Radarsat and
TerraSAR-X constellation approaches are foreseen to provide for reduced revisit times and enhanced acquisition
capacities worldwide.
An alternative to a full constellation approach is
offered by Coordinated Constellation Concepts. Such a
concept entails the sharing of risks and benefits of implementing space systems between various partners, each
of whom owns and operates a part of the constellation.
While the ownership of the space assets remains with
the respective companies, the partners have access to the
capacities of the entire fleet.
Such a Coordinated Constellation Concept is currently implemented for the German satellite formation
TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X (commercial data provider: Airbus Defence and Space) together with the Spanish PAZ
satellite (owner and operator: Hisdesat). The owner comMARCH 2014
FIGURE 3. Comparison between current imaging capabilities (left)
and the future enhanced capabilities of TerraSAR-X Next Generation (center and right). © 2013 Airbus Defence and Space/Infoterra
GmbH, DLR.
panies of the respective systems retain complete control
of their satellites, while they implement a harmonised
ground and service segment. This integration includes
harmonised acquisition modes as well as coordinated
acquisition planning, satellite tasking, ordering and
delivery procedures. Operating the virtually identical satellites in a constellation affords Airbus Defence and Space
and Hisdesat with a more flexible capacity management
of their systems. Data users will benefit from significantly
reduced revisit times, enhanced acquisition capacities
and easy ordering and delivery processes. The constellation approach also provides for enhanced applications
such as improved SAR capabilities for precise monitoring
and detection of surface movement phenomena.
B) EXPANSION OF GROUND STATION NETWORKS
The most commonly pursued approach to improve data
delivery times is the expansion of the ground station network. In the vicinity of the ground stations an immediate
FIGURE 4. SpaceDataHighway architecture. © ESA.
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data download and re-tasking of satellites is possible. Satellite operators are thus increasingly leveraging the use of various ground station locations distributed across the globe.
Polar stations can offer access to (almost) all orbits of polar
orbiting LEO satellites, thus enabling the data download
after completion of each orbit and also the timely re-tasking
of the space systems. In addition mid-latitude stations offer
complementary capacities for operators to improve data
latency and coverage.
Furthermore, multi-polarization capability will enable new
applications and services in a variety of domains.
Another trend is the combination of SAR data with AIS
data for maritime monitoring applications. AIS receivers
as secondary payload on SAR satellites (as foreseen for
TerraSAR-X Next Generation) will enable a synchronised
acquisition and matching of SAR data and AIS information facilitating a rapid provision of information for Open
Ocean Surveillance.
C) SPACE-BASED DATA TRANSFER SYSTEMS
In the future space-based data transfer systems will complement conventional data transmission functionalities.
Such data transmission systems are able to extend the
NRT product delivery capabilities from areas of interest with
a direct receiving station to a
DEMANDS AND
truly global scale.
REQUIREMENTS FROM
The first commercial data
NOVEL APPLICATIONS
transfer
system, the SpaceDaAND INCREASED UPDATE
taHighway3, is currently under
OF SAR IMAGERY ARE
implementation and will comTHE KEY DRIVERS OF
mence service provision in
TECHNOLOGY AND
2015. A system of geostationSERVICE DEVELOPMENTS.
ary satellites will enable satellites to immediately transfer
data to the ground instead of
waiting until they pass over a ground station. The key
technology of the SpaceDataHighway is its novel Laser
Communication Terminal (LCT), which facilitates data
transmission at up to 1.8 Gigabits per second. Routing
data over the SpaceDataHighway will enable unprecedented performance options for satellite payload tasking
and data downlinking—bringing a true meaning to the
term near-real-time data. Actionable information can be
made available within 10–15 minutes on a global scale.
Thus applications such as Open Ocean Surveillance and
defence missions will be able to benefit from enhanced
reactivity and high volume surveillance capabilities outside of ground station vicinity.
THE TerraSAR-X NEXT GENERATION PROGRAM
A second generation of TerraSAR-X is currently under
preparation. The development of the next generation mission is based on the experiences and lessons learned from
more than five years of commercial SAR operations with
TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X and related user feedback.
This TerraSAR-X Next Generation mission will benefit
from an advanced SAR sensor technology allowing a spatial resolution of 0.5 m by utilizing the current ITU allowance for 600 MHz chirp bandwidth, and down to 0.25 m
with a total sweep (chirp) bandwidth of 1,200 MHz,
as will be considered under an agenda item 1.12 at the
World Radio Conference in 2015.
Services based on TerraSAR-X Next Generation will
comprise heritage modes and products from the first generation as well as enhanced products and services, featuring improved signal to noise ratio, larger swaths and submeter resolution, polarimetry, and synchronous AIS data
collection. The data dissemination concept of TerraSAR-X
Next Generation will continue to support registered TerraSAR-X receiving stations.
The TerraSAR-X Next Generation mission is intended to
take TerraSAR-X data and service continuity well beyond
2025. The Space Segment, initially a single spacecraft, will
be launched into the TerraSAR-X reference orbit while first
generation TerraSAR-X systems will still be operational.
A constellation concept called WorldSAR is envisaged
for TerraSAR-X Next Generation. The objective of WorldSAR is to provide Near-Real-Time (NRT) remote sensing
information—at a global scale. This will be achieved
through a network of three to five TerraSAR-X Next Generation type satellites operated by entities in regulated
partner nations in the frame of a Coordinated Constellation Concept (CCC). This establishes a weather independent high quality SAR satellite constellation with
unrivalled NRT data access and high speed workflow/
processing capability for the benefit of the users.
The WorldSAR constellation will use a network of
main and external ground stations including polar stations to minimise the information latency at the regional
levels. Complementing the conventional data transmission functionality with a Laser Communication Terminal
(LCT) would enable the bi-directional optical communication via relay satellites (EDRS—SpaceDataHighway
with potential extensions) and extend the NRT product
delivery capabilities to a global scale.
GRS
ENHANCEMENT OF APPLICATIONS
The technological advancements and enhancement of service capabilities as described in the previous chapters will
enable the improvement of various SAR-based applications.
Sophisticated future systems will be able to provide a
geolocation accuracy of even less than 20 cm. This facilitates
enhanced 3D applications in urban areas and surface motion
monitoring of small infrastructures. Particularly, very high
resolution will increase the number of persistent scatters
significantly, which will open the floor for highly precise
interferometric and satellite based geodesy applications.
3The SpaceDataHighway Service is based on the European Data Relay System (EDRS) developed and implemented within a Public Private Partnership (PPP) between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Airbus Defence
and Space.
46
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GRSS MEMBER HIGHLIGHTS
ROSANN MAROSY
Applauding 50 Years of Fellows
I
n 2014, IEEE will mark its 50th Fellow Class. It represents decades of honoring IEEE Fellows whose extraordinary accomplishments have changed the world.
The IEEE grade of Fellow was born in 1964 out
of the merge of the American Institute of Electrical
Engineers (AIEE) and the Institute of Radio Engineers
(IRE). The emphasis on the elevation was and still is
reserved for select IEEE members who have contributed importantly to the advancement of engineering,
science, and technology, bringing the realization of
significant value to society.
Only one-tenth of one percent of the total voting
membership can be elevated in any one year. Over
the last fifty years, IEEE has elevated roughly 10,000
members to this honor. This is a very small percentage
compared to the total membership. Unquestionably,
Fellows are the crown jewels of the organization. One
can only imagine what the next fifty years will bring,
and the new technology that will be developed, discovered, or taught, and what new IEEE Fellows will be
recognized for their achievements.
Throughout the year, various celebrations will take
place to honor those who have achieved this distinction. If you know an IEEE Fellow, congratulate him/
her again for receiving this honor. You can recognize
them personally, or you can acknowledge them publicly at region meetings, society meetings, section
meetings, and/or conferences.
New Fellows Directory
N
ew to the Fellow Web Site is the redesigned Fellows Directory. It is the most comprehensive
online search and networking tool available to members. If you need to complete an IEEE Fellow Nomination, gather information for a region, section, or society, it’s now easy to accomplish.
The information in the directory can be accessed
by six categories: alphabetical by last name, year
elevated, gender, IEEE region, IEEE society, and
MARCH 2014
deceased. Within these categories, members can
search, sort, or run a filter. For example, a report
can be compiled on all Fellows within a specific
region elevated in a particular year. The directory
allows members to view the profiles of Fellows plus
the ability to network with the Fellows. If you are
not an IEEE member, you will have limited access to
certain information.
Check it out today. The directory works on handheld devices and computers. To access the directory, go
to www.ieee.org/fellows, then click the Fellow Directory icon.
47
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GRSS Members Elevated to the Grade of
IEEE Fellow for 2014
Joachim Ender “for contributions to multi-channel synthetic
aperture radar and radar array signal processing”
Bertram Arbesser-Rastburg “for leadership in satellite
communications, navigation, and remote sensing”
Thomas Ainsworth “for contributions to the interpretation and analysis of polarimetric SAR imagery”
HeanTeik Chuah “for leadership in engineering
education”
Irena Hajnsek “for contributions to synthetic aperture
radar imaging using airborne sensors and satellite missions”
Scott Hensley “for contributions to radar remote sensing of
the Earth and planetary bodies and advancement of interferometric synthetic aperture radar”
Toshio Iguchi “for contributions to spaceborne meteorological instruments and radar”
Michael King “for fundamental research in remote sensing
of clouds and aerosols”
Konstantinos Papathanassiou “for contributions to
polarimetric interferometry for synthetic aperture radar”
Daniele Riccio “for contributions to satellite-based synthetic aperture radar imaging”
Jiancheng Shi “for contributions to active and passive
microwave remote sensing”
GRSS Members Elevated to the Grade of Senior
Member in the Period October–November 2013
◗ An attractive fine wood and bronze engraved Senior Member
OCTOBER:
NOVEMBER:
Mark Drinkwater
Benelux Section
Vincent Kirk
Coastal Los Angeles
Section
Alejandro Monsivais Huertero
Mexico Section
Upendra Singh
Hampton Roads
Section
Gloria Faus
Guadalajara Section
Lorenzo Lo Monte
Dayton Section
Ferdinando Nunziata
Italy Section
Martin Suess
Benelux Section
Chao Wang
Beijing Section
Senior membership has the following distinct benefits:
◗ The professional recognition of your peers for technical and
professional excellence.
plaque to proudly display.
◗ Up to $25.00 gift certificate toward one new Society membership.
◗ A letter of commendation to your employer on the achievement
of Senior Member grade (upon the request of the newly elected
Senior Member).
◗ Announcement of elevation in Section/Society and/or local
newsletters, newspapers and notices.
◗ Eligibility to hold executive IEEE volunteer positions.
◗ Can serve as Reference for Senior Member applicants.
◗ Invited to be on the panel to review Senior Member applications.
◗ Eligible for election to be an IEEE Fellow.
Applications for senior membership can be obtained from
IEEE website: ____________________________
https://www.ieee.org/membership_services/
membership/senior/application/index.html.
__________________________ You can also visit
the GRSS website: http://www.grss-ieee.org.
48
GRS
MARCH 2014
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CALL FOR NOMINATIONS
FOR THE GRS-S ADMINISTRATIVE COMMITTEE
The Nominations Committee calls upon our membership to nominate members to serve on the GRSS
Administrative Committee (AdCom). A nominating petition carrying a minimum of 2% of the names of
eligible Society members (~60), excluding students, shall automatically place that nominee on the slate.
Such nominations must be made by May 12, 2014. The Nominations Committee may choose to include a
name on the slate regardless of the number of names generated by the nominating petition process. Prior to
submission of a nomination petition, the petitioner shall have determined that the nominee named in the
petition is willing to serve if elected; and evidence of such willingness to serve shall be submitted with the
petition. Candidates must be current members of the IEEE and the GRSS.
Petition signatures can be submitted electronically through the Society website, or by signing, scanning
and electronically mailing the pdf file of the paper petition. The name of each member signing the paper
petition shall be clearly printed or typed. For identification purposes of signatures on paper petitions,
membership numbers or addresses as listed in the official IEEE membership records shall be included.
Only signatures submitted electronically through the Society website or original signatures on paper petitions shall be accepted.
A brief biography of the nominee, similar to that used for TGARS authors, but not to exceed one page, will
be required and should be submitted with the nominating petition by May 12, 2014 to the GRSS
Nominations Committee, c/o Dr. David G. Goodenough, IEEE GRSS Nominations Chair, Computer
Science Department, University of Victoria, PO Box 3055, STN CSC, Victoria, BC, V8W 3P6, Canada.
E-mail: [email protected].
The slate derived by the Nominations Committee shall be presented to the Society membership at large via
electronic ballot, and the three candidates receiving the greatest number of votes shall be elected. The
Administrative Committee shall hold an Annual Meeting in November, 2014 after results of this vote are
known, at which time elections will be held to fill the remaining three regular vacancies in the
Administrative Committee, with all successful candidates to start on January 1, 2015.
Our AdCom consists of 18 elected persons, each of whom serves for three years. Their terms are overlapping to ensure continuity. Additional information on the society and the AdCom is available at ____
http:// www.
grss-ieee.org/. We thank all candidates for their willingness to serve and support the IEEE Geoscience and
Remote Sensing Society.
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CALENDAR
See also http:// WWW.IEEE.ORG/CONFERENCES_EVENTS/INDEX.HTML or HTTP://WWW.TECHEXPO.COM/EVENTS
___________________________
2014
MARCH
9TH CONFERENCE ON
IMAGE INFORMATION
MINING: THE SENTINELS ERA
(ESA-EUSC-JRC 2014)
March 5–7, 2014
Bucharest, Rumania
http://rssportal.esa.int/tiki-index.
php?page=ESA-EUSC-JRC-2014
__________________
3RD GEOSPATIAL CONFERENCE
IN TUNIS (GCT): BUILDING
GEOSPATIAL BRIDGES FOR THE
SUSTAINED DEVELOPMENT OF
NORTH AFRICA
March 17–21, 2014
Gammarth, Tunis
http://gct-tunisia.com/
5TH WORKSHOP OF THE EARSEL
SIG ON LU & LC—NASA LCLUC
March 18–19, 2014
Berlin, Germany
http://www.geographie.hu-berlin.de/
labs/geomatics/events/earsel-en/
___________________
workshop/
______
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
ON REMOTE SENSING (ICRS 2014)
March 19–20, 2014
Dubai, UAE
http://www.waset.org/
conference/2014/03/dubai/ICRS
___________________
2014 GLOBAL LAND PROJECT
OPEN SCIENCE MEETING
March 19–21, 2014
Berlin, Germany
http://www.glp-osm2014.org/
6TH INTERNATIONAL
CONFERENCE ON ADVANCED
GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION
SYSTEMS, APPLICATIONS, AND
SERVICES (GEOPROCESSING 2014)
March 23–27, 2014
Barcelona, Spain
http://www.iaria.org/conferences2014/
GEOProcessing14.html
______________
50
1ST INTERNATIONAL
CONFERENCE ON
INFORMATION AND
COMMUNICATION
TECHNOLOGIES FOR
DISASTER MANAGEMENT
(ICT-DM’2014)
March 24–25, 2014
Algiers, Algeria
http://www.ict-dm.org/index.php
ASPRS 2014 ANNUAL
CONFERENCE
March 26–28, 2014
Louisville, KY, USA
http://conferences.asprs.org/
Louisville-2014/blog
____________
35TH INTERNATIONAL
CONFERENCE ON GEOGRAPHIC
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
(ICGIS 2014)
March 28–29, 2014
Madrid, Spain
https://www.waset.org/conference/2014/
_______________________
madrid/icgis/index.php
_____________
APRIL
3RD INT. CONFERENCE
ON THE USE OF SPACE
TECHNOLOGY FOR WATER
MANAGEMENT
April 1–4, 2014
Rabat, Morocco
http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/SAP/
act2014/Morocco/index.html
_________________
5TH CONFERENCE ON
AGRICULTURAL POLICY
IMPLEMENTATION AND
GEO-INFORMATION
(CAPIGI 2014)
April 2–4, 2014
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
http://www.capigi.eu/Home.aspx
2ND INT. CONFERENCE ON
REMOTE SENSING AND
GEOINFORMATICS
April 7–10, 2014
Paphos, Cyprus
http://www.cyprusremotesensing.com/
rscy2014/
______
WAVELENGTH
CONFERENCE 2014
April 14–16, 2014
Worcestershire, UK
http://www.rspsoc-wavelength.org.uk/
index.php/wavelength-2014
________________
10TH ANNUAL
GEOINT SYMPOSIUM:
OPERATIONALIZING
INTELLIGENCE FOR
GLOBAL MISSIONS
April 14–17, 2014
Tampa, Florida, USA
http://geoint2013.com/
10TH INTEREXPO
GEO-SIBERIA
April 16–18, 2014
Novosibirsk, Russia
http://www.gisresources.com/
interexpo-geo-siberia-2014/
________________
Contacts: __________
[email protected];
[email protected]
__________________
INTERNATIONAL INFORMATION
SYSTEMS FOR CRISIS RESPONSE
AND MANAGEMENT (ISCRAM)
April 18–21, 2014
Pennsylvania, USA
http://iscram2014.ist.psu.edu/
7TH IGRSM INTERNATIONAL
REMOTE SENSING & GIS
CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION
April 21–22, 2014
Kuala Lampur, Malaysia
http://www.igrsm.com/igrsm2014/
5TH INTERNATIONAL
WORKSHOP ON REMOTE
SENSING OF VEGETATION
FLUORESCENCE
April 22–24, 2014
Paris, France
http://www.congrexprojects.com/
2014-events/14c04/introduction
___________________
EGU CONFERENCE
April 27–May 2, 2014
Vienna, Austria
http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.
org/EGU2014/session/15716
MARCH 2014
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MAY
10TH INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP
ON GREENHOUSE GAS
MEASUREMENTS FROM SPACE
May 5–7, 2014
ESA-ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands
http://www.congrexprojects.com/
2014-events/14c02/introduction
___________________
GEOSPATIAL WORLD FORUM
May 5–9, 2014
Geneve, Switzerland
http://www.geospatialworldforum.org/
SPIE DEFENSE SECURITY &
REMOTE SENSING
May 5–9, 2014
Baltimore, Maryland, USA
http://spie.org/x90758.xml
MundoGEO CONNECT 2014
May 7–9, 2014
Sao Paulo, Brazil
http://mundogeoconnect.com/2014/
36TH INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM
ON REMOTE SENSING OF
ENVIRONMENT (ISRSE)
May 11–15, 2014
Berlin, Germany
http://www.symposia.org/
2014 AWRA SPRING SPECIALTY
CONFERENCE ON GIS AND
WATER RESOURCES VIII:
DATA TO DECISIONS
May 12–14, 2014
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
http://www.awra.org/meetings/
SnowBird2014/
_________
ISPRS: GEO-SPATIAL DATABASES
AND LOCATION BASED SERVICES
May 14–16, USA
Suzhou, China
http://www2.isprs.org/
2014tc4symposium/index.html
___________________
ISPRS: DATA, INFORMATION,
AND KNOWLEDGE SHARING
FOR GEO-EDUCATION
May 19–21, 2014
Wuhan, China
http://www.lmars.whu.edu.cn/isprscom6/
index.html
_______
IEEE RADAR CONFERENCE:
FROM SENSING TO
INFORMATION
May 19–23, 2014
Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
http://www.radarcon2014.org
MARCH 2014
SENTINEL-2 FOR
SCIENCE WS
May 20–22, 2014
ESA-ESRIN, Frascati, Italy
http://seom.esa.int/S2forScience2014/
GEOBIA 2014
May 21–24, 2014
Thessaloniki, Greece
http://geobia2014.web.auth.gr/geobia14/
SPLIT REMOTE SENSING
SUMMER SCHOOL
May 22–23, 2014
Split, Croatia
http://splitremotesensing.com/
SYMPOSIUM: REMOTE SENSING
FOR CONSERVATION—
ZSL 2014
May 22–24, 2014
London, UK
http://www.remote-sensing-biodiversity.
org/symposium-2014
ESA-MOST DRAGON-3
May 26–29, 2014
Chengdu, China
https://dragon3.esa.int/web/dragon-3/home
_________________________
SMALL SATELLITES SYSTEMS
& SERVICES SYMPOSIUM
May 26–30, 2014
Porto Petro-Mallorca
http://congrexprojects.com/2014events/4S2014/home
_____________
JUNE
GLOBAL SPACE APPLICATIONS
CONFERENCE (GLAC)
June 2–4, 2014
Paris, France
http://www.iafastro.org/index.php/events/
global-series-conferences/glac-2014
_____________________
10TH EUROPEAN CONFERENCE
ON SYNTHETIC APERTURE
RADAR (EUSAR)
June 3–5, 2014
Berlin, Germany
http://conference.vde.com/eusar/2014/
Pages/default.aspx
___________
17TH AGILE CONFERENCE
ON GEOGRAPHIC
INFORMATION SCIENCE:
CONNECTING A DIGITAL
EUROPE THROUGH
LOCATION AND PLACE
June 3–6, 2014
Castellón, Spain
http://agile-online.org/
3RD INTERNATIONAL
WORKSHOP ON EARTH
OBSERVATION
AND RS APPLICATIONS
(EORSA)
June 11–14, 2014
Changsha, China
http://www.eorsa2014.org/
5TH JUBILEE INTERNATIONAL
CONFERENCE ON
CARTOGRAPHY & GIS &
SEMINAR WITH EU
COOPERATION ON EARLY
WARNING AND DISASTER/
CRISIS MANAGEMENT
June 15–21, 2014
Riviera, Bulgaria
http://iccgis2014.cartography-gis.com/
Home.html
_______
34 EARSEL SYMPOSIUM &
SIG GEOLOG. APP & SIG
3D-URBAN
June 16–20, 2014
Warsaw, Poland
http://www.earsel.org/symposia/2014symposium-Warsaw/
____________
14TH SGEM2014
INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC
GEOCONFERENCES
June 17–26, 2014,
Albena, Bulgaria
http://www.sgem.org/
2ND ASIAN CONFERENCE ON
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
FOR CRISIS RESPONSE
AND MANAGEMENT
(ISCRAM-ASIA 2014)
June 20–21, 2014
Colombo, Sri Lanka
http://iscramasia2014.org/
ISPRS TECHNICAL
COMMISSION V
SYMPOSIUM
“CLOSE-RANGE
IMAGING, RANGING AND
APPLICATIONS”
June 23–25, 2014
Riva del Garda, Italy
http://isprs-commission5.fbk.eu/
IEEE/ISPRS WORKSHOP
ON MULTI-SENSOR
FUSION FOR OUTDOOR
DYNAMIC SCENE
UNDERSTANDING
June 23–28, 2014
Columbus, OH, USA
http://www.isprs.org/calendar/2014.aspx
51
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22ND INTERNATIONAL
CONFERENCE ON
GEOINFORMATICS
(GEOINFORMATICS 2014)
June 24–27, 2014
Kaohsiung, Taiwan
https://www.cpgis.org/Conferences/
_____________________
ConferenceDefault.aspx?ID=69
__________________
8TH IAPR WORKSHOP
ON PATTERN RECOGNITION
IN REMOTE SENSING
(PRRS 2014)
August 24, 2014
Stockholm, Sweden
http://iapr-tc7.de/prrs/PRRS2014.htm
22ND INTERNATIONAL
CONFERENCE ON PATTERN
RECOGNITION
August 24–28, 2014
Stockholm, Sweden
http://www.icpr2014.org
6TH WORKSHOP ON
HYPERSPECTRAL IMAGE
AND SIGNAL PROCESSING:
EVOLUTION IN REMOTE
SENSING
June 25–27, 2014
Lausanne, Switzerland
www.ieee-whispers.com
JULY
AFRICAGEO 2014
CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION
July 1–3, 2014
Cape Town, South Africa
http://www.africageo.org/
GI_FORUM 2014, GEOSPATIAL
INNOVATION FOR SOCIETY
July 1–4, 2014
Salzburgo
http://www.gi-forum.org/
11TH INTERNATIONAL
SYMPOSIUM ON
SPATIAL ACCURACY
ASSESSMENT IN NATURAL
RESOURCES &
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
July 8–11, 2014
East Lansing, Michigan, USA
http://web2.geo.msu.edu/sa14/
INTERNATIONAL GEOSCIENCE
AND REMOTE SENSING
SYMPOSIUM (IGARSS 2014)
July 13–18, 2014
Quebec, Canada
http://www.igarss2014.org/
52
35TH CANADIAN SYMPOSIUM
ON REMOTE SENSING (CSRS)
July 13–18, 2014
Québec City, Canada
12 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
PRECISION AGRICULTURE
July 20–23, 2014
Sacramento, California, USA
https://www.ispag.org/icpa/
________________
AUGUST
COSPAR SCIENTIFIC ASSEMBLY
August 2–10, 2014
Moscow, Russia
https://www.cospar-assembly.org/
____________________
5TH INTERNATIONAL
DISASTER AND RISK
CONFERENCE (IDRC)
August 24–28, 2014
Davos, Switzerland
http://grforum.org/news/
ec5780f57814071d75ec48c7d9b698f6/?
_______________________
tx_news_pi1%5Bnews%5D=4&tx_news_
________________________
pi1%5Bcontroller%5D=News&tx_news_
________________________
pi1%5Baction%5D=detail
________________
ICSU GENERAL ASSEMBLY
August 28–3 September
Auckland, New Zeland
http://www.icsu.org/
SEPTEMBER
1ST INTERNATIONAL
GEOMATICS APPLICATIONS
CONFERENCE
(GEOMAPPLICA)
September 8–11, 2014
Skiathos Island, Greece
http://geomapplica.prd.uth.gr/
UN/AUSTRIA SYMPOSIUM ON
SPACE SCIENCE
Graz, Austria
sched/index.html
___________
SPIE REMOTE SENSING
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
http://spie.org/remote-sensing-europe.xml
EUMESAT METEOROLOGICAL
SATELLITE CONFERENCE
Geneva, Switzerland
http://www.eumetsat.int/website/
home/News/ConferencesandEvents/
_____________________
DAT_2076129.html
____________
8TH INTERNATIONAL
CONFERENCE ON GEOGRAPHIC
INFORMATION SCIENCE
Vienna, Austria
http://www.giscience.org/
UNITED NATIONS/INTERNATIONAL
ASTRONAUTICAL FEDERATION
WORKSHOP ON SPACE
TECHNOLOGY FOR
SOCIO-ECONOMIC BENEFITS
Toronto, Canada
sched/index.html
__________
THEMATIC PROCESSING,
MODELING AND ANALYSIS OF
REMOTELY SENSED DATA
September 29–October 2, 2014
Istanbul, Turkey
http://isprstc7-2014.org/
OCTOBER
JOINT INTERNATIONAL
CONFERENCE ON GEOSPATIAL
THEORY, PROCESSING, MODELLING
AND APPLICATIONS
October 6–8, 2014
Toronto, Canada
http://www2.isprs.org/2014GeoTPMA/
home.html
_______
9TH CONF. OF THE ASIAN
FEDERATION FOR INFORMATION
TECH. IN AGRICULTURE (AFITA2014)
October 6–9, 2014
Perth, Australia
http://www.asicta.org/AFITA2014/
CONFERENCE AND TRADE FAIR FOR
GEODESY, GEOINFORMATION AND
LAND MANAGEMENT (INTERGEO)
October 7–9, 2014
Berlin, Germany
http://www.intergeo.de/en/index.html
GEOCONGRES 2014
October 7–11, 2014
Quebec, Canada
http://www.geocongres2014.ca/
UNITED NATIONS/ECUADOR
WORKSHOP ON SPACE
TECHNOLOGY FOR SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT IN MOUNTAIN
REGIONS OF THE ANDEAN
COUNTRIES
October 13–17, 2014
Quito, Ecuador
sched/index.html
___________
MARCH 2014
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CLIMATE RESEARCH AND EARTH
OBSERVATIONS FROM SPACE:
CLIMATE INFORMATION FOR
DECISION MAKING
October 13–17, 2014
Darmstadt, Germany
http://www.theclimatesymposium2014.
com/index_.php/climatesymposium/index
16TH IAMG CONFERENCE—
GEOSTATISTICAL AND
GEOSPATIAL APPROACHES
FOR THE CHARACTERIZATION OF
NATURAL RESOURCES
IN THE ENVIRONMENT:
CHALLENGES, PROCESSES
AND STRATEGIES
October 17–20, 2014
New Delhi, India
http://www.jnu.ac.in/Conference/
IAMG2014/topics.htm
_____________
UNITED NATIONS/
MEXICO SYMPOSIUM
ON BASIC SPACE
TECHNOLOGY
October 20–24, 2014
Baja California, Mexico
sched/index.html
___________
SPIE ASIA-PACIFIC REMOTE
SENSING 2014
October 27–31, 2014
Chaoyang, China
http://spie.org/x18881.xml
AFRICAN ASSOCIATION OF
REMOTE SENSING OF THE
ENVIRONMENT (AARSE)
CONFERENCE 2014
October 27–31, 2014
Cape Town, South Africa
http://africanremotesensing.org/
NOVEMBER
WORKSHOP OF
PHOTOGRAMMETRY,
REMOTE SENSING AND
LASER SCANNING
November 3–5, 2014
Prague, Czech Republic
http://lfgm.fsv.cvut.
cz/?cap=&zal=408&lang=en
_________________
PAN OCEAN REMOTE SENSING
CONFERENCE (PORSEC) 2014
Bali, Indonesia
http://porsec2014.unud.ac.id/
FORESTSAT 2014 CONFERENCE:
A BRIDGE BETWEEN FOREST
SCIENCES, REMOTE SENSING AND
GEO-SPATIAL APPLICATIONS
Riva del Garda, Italy
http://forestsat2014.com/
PECORA 19 & ISPRS COMMISSION I
SYMPOSIUM
Denver, CO, USA
http://www.asprs.org/
ASPRS-Conferences/blog.html
__________________
PACIFIC ISLANDS GIS/RS USER
CONFERENCE
Suva, Fiji Islands
http://picgisrs.appspot.com/
INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON
NATURAL DISASTER MITIGATION
TO ESTABLISH SOCIETY WITH
RESILIENCE (INTERPRAEVENT 2014)
Nara, Japan
http://interpraevent2014.com/
GRS
Proceedings of the IEEE:
Pioneering technology from
the inside out.
At Proceedings of the IEEE, we want you to understand
emerging breakthroughs—from beginning to end, from
the inside out. With multi-disciplinary technology coverage
that explains how key innovations evolve and impact the
world, you’ll find the comprehensive research that only
IEEE can provide.
Understand technology from every angle—subscribe today.
www.ieee.org/proceedings
MARCH 2014
53
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ERRATA CORRIGE
T
he “GRSS Publication Awards Presented at IGARSS
2013 Banquet” report, by Martti Hallikainen and
Werner Wiesbeck, published in the IEEE Geoscience
and Remote Sensing Magazine, N. 4, Vol. 1, December
2013, page 41, wrongly reported the winner of the Second Student Prize Paper Award.
CHANGE:
The Second Student Prize Paper Award is presented
to Octavio Ponce with the citation: “For the paper
“Semisupervised Nonlinear Feature Extraction for Image Classification.””
His advisor is Andreas Reigber from the Karlsruhe
Institute of Technology.
TO:
“The Second Student Prize Paper Award is presented
to Octavio Ponce with the citation: For the paper “First
Demonstration of 3-D Holographic Tomography with Fully
Polarimetric Multi-circular SAR at L-band”.
His advisor is Andreas Reigber from German Aerospace Center (DLR).”
GRS
Photo: NASA
Innovation doesn’t just happen.
Read first-person accounts of
IEEE members who were there.
IEEE Global History Network
www.ieeeghn.org
54
MARCH 2014
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AD INDEX
The Advertisers Index contained in this issue is compiled as a service to our readers and advertisers:
the publisher is not liable for errors or omissions although every effort is made to ensure its accuracy.
Be sure to let our advertisers know you found them through IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine.
CVR 4
IEEE Marketing Department
www.ieee.org/digitalsubscriptions
James A. Vick
Sr. Director,
Advertising
+1 212 419 7767;
Fax: +1 212 419 7589
[email protected]
_____________
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Advertising Sales
Director
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Fax + 1 415 863 4717
[email protected]
______________
Susan E. Schneiderman
Business Development
Manager
+1 732 562 3946;
Fax: +1 732 981 1855
[email protected]
_____________
PRODUCT
ADVERTISING
MidAtlantic
Lisa Rinaldo
Phone: +1 732 772 0160
Fax: +1 732 772 0164
[email protected]
_____________
NY, NJ, PA, DE, MD, DC,
KY, WV
New England/
South Central/
Eastern Canada
Jody Estabrook
Phone: +1 774 283 4528
Fax: +1 774 283 4527
[email protected]
_____________
ME, VT, NH, MA, RI, CT,
AR, LA, OK, TX
Canada: Quebec,
Nova Scotia,
Newfoundland,
Prince Edward Island,
New Brunswick
Southeast
Thomas Flynn
Phone: +1 770 645 2944
Fax: +1 770 993 4423
[email protected]
_____________
VA, NC, SC, GA, FL, AL,
MS, TN
Midwest/Central Canada
Dave Jones
Phone: +1 708 442 5633
Fax: +1 708 442 7620
[email protected]
_____________
IL, IA, KS, MN, MO, NE,
ND, SD, WI, OH
Canada: Manitoba,
Saskatchewan, Alberta
Midwest/Ontario,
Canada
Will Hamilton
Phone: +1 269 381 2156
Fax: +1 269 381 2556
[email protected]
______________
IN, MI. Canada: Ontario
West Coast/
Mountain States/
Western Canada
Marshall Rubin
Phone: +1 818 888 2407
Fax: +1 818 888 4907
[email protected]
______________
AZ, CO, HI, NM, NV,
UT, AK, ID, MT, WY, OR,
WA, CA
Canada: British Columbia
Europe/Africa/
Middle East/Asia/Far
East/Pacific Rim
Heleen Vodegel
Phone:
+44 1875 825 700
Fax: +44 1875 825 701
[email protected]
_____________
Europe, Africa, Middle
East, Asia, Far East,
Pacific Rim, Australia,
New Zealand
RECRUITMENT
ADVERTISING
MidAtlantic
Lisa Rinaldo
Phone: +1 732 772 0160
Fax: +1 732 772 0164
[email protected]
_____________
NY, NJ, CT, PA, DE, MD,
DC, KY, WV
New England/
Eastern Canada
Liza Reich
Phone: +1 212 419 7578
Fax: +1 212 419 7589
[email protected]
__________
ME, VT, NH, MA, RI
Canada: Quebec,
Nova Scotia,
Newfoundland,
Prince Edward Island,
New Brunswick
Southeast
Cathy Flynn
Phone: +1 770 645 2944
Fax: +1 770 993 4423
[email protected]
_____________
VA, NC, SC, GA, FL, AL,
MS, TN
Midwest/South Central/
Central Canada
Darcy Giovingo
Phone: +1 224 616 3034
Fax: +1 847 729 4269
[email protected]
_____________
AR, IL, IN, IA, KS, LA, MI,
MN, MO, NE, ND, SD,
OH, OK, TX, WI
Canada: Ontario,
Manitoba, Saskatchewan,
Alberta
West Coast/Southwest/
Mountain States/Asia
Tim Matteson
Phone: +1 310 836 4064
Fax: +1 310 836 4067
[email protected]
______________
AZ, CO, HI, NV, NM, UT,
CA, AK, ID, MT, WY,
OR, WA
Canada: British Columbia
Europe/Africa/
Middle East
Heleen Vodegel
Phone:
+44 1875 825 700
Fax: +44 1875 825 701
[email protected]
_____________
Europe, Africa, Middle
East
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