• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.183-192
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• 2009

SAR(Synthetic Aperture Radar) is an all-weather imaging radar and is widely used in military and civil application. Especially high-resolution SAR images are very important in military purpose because it can be used at target recognition application. LIG Nex1 developed a SAR system called NexSAR with bandwidth of 600 MHz and resolution of 30 cm to obtain technologies required for high-resolution SAR. To achieve 600 MHz bandwidth of waveform generator, two DDSs are used and its output signals are SSB modulated. And deramp technique is used to reduce the sampling rate of ADC at high resolution mode. NexSAR has stripmap and spotlight modes and its functionality and performances are evaluated through ground and flight tests.

• Journal of Space Technology and Applications
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.337-355
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• 2021

This paper is made to suggest a future strategy for the Korean High Resolution Wide Swath Synthetic Aperture Radar (HRWS SAR) satellite development by surveying the current trends for the SAR satellite technologies. From the survey, the latest SAR technology trends are revealed of using Digital Beam-Forming (DBF), SCan-On-Receive (SCORE), Displaced Phase Center Antenna (DPCA), interferometry, and polarimetry for exploiting the SAR imagery. Based on the latest SAR technology trends and the foreign HRWS SAR development cases, the strategy for the future HRWS Korean SAR satellite development is suggested to develop the DPCA and SCORE technologies by using the KOrea Multi-Purpose SATellite-6 (KOMPSAT-6) which is going to launch in a few years, and consequently to develop the HRWS SAR satellites which can monitor the whole Earth at weekly intervals.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.105-113
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• 2010

SAR(Synthetic Aperture Radar) has characteristics well-suited for the measurement of geophysical parameters during day and night in all weather conditions. Recently, SAR data with high resolution acquired by satellites became available to the public. In such data, many features and phenomena of geometric structure of man-made objects and natural environments become observable. In this paper, we discuss main considerations including geometric distortion and coregistration for efficient utilization of high resolution SAR images. And, various advanced technologies in SAR application fields are introduced.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.181-190
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• 2011

Since the radar satellite missions such as TerraSAR-X and COSMO-SkyMed were launched in 2007, the spatial resolution of spaceborne SAR(Synthetic Aperture Radar) images reaches about 1 meter at spotlight mode. In 2011, the first Korean SAR satellite, KOMPSAT-5, will be launched, operating at X-band with the highest spatial resolution of 1 m as well. The improved spatial resolution of state-of-the-art SAR sensor suggests expanding InSAR(Interferometric SAR) analysis in urban monitoring. By the way, the shadow and layover phenomena are more prominent in urban areas due to building structure because of inherent side-looking geometry of SAR system. Up to date the most conventional algorithms do not consider the return signals at the frontage of building during InSAR phase and SAR intensity simulation. In this study the new algorithm introducing multi-scattering in layover region is proposed for phase and intensity simulation, which is utilized a precise LIDAR DSM(Digital Surface Model) in urban areas. The InSAR phases simulated by the proposed method are compared with TerraSAR-X spotlight data. As a result, both InSAR phases are well matched, even in layover areas. This study will be applied to urban monitoring using high resolution SAR data, in terms of change detection and displacement monitoring at the scale of building unit.

• Aerospace Engineering and Technology
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.131-141
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• 2014

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is a powerful and well established microwave remote sensing technique which enables high resolution measurements of the Earth surface independent of weather conditions and sunlight illumination. In this study, this paper first summarizes the basic SAR theory and the history of the SAR satellites. The second part of this paper gives an overview of new technologies for future SAR systems. New innovative concepts and technologies for SAR satellites will be digital beamforming, High Resolution Wide Swath (HRWS), Waveform Encoding, Terrain Observation by Progressive Scan (TOPS), and so on. These technologies will play an important role for future spaceborne SAR satellites.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2007.10a
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• pp.254-257
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• 2007

This paper presents an examination of the spatial integration method for extracting the RCS of a trihedral corner reflector from SAR images for SAR external calibration. An exact external radiometric calibration technique is required for extracting an exact calibration constant. Therefore, we examine the accuracy of the spatial integration method, which is commonly used for the SAR external radiometric calibration. At first, an SAR image for a trihedral corner reflector is simulated with a high-resolution SAR impulse response with a known theoretical RCS of the reflector, and a background clutter image for the high resolution SAR system is also generated. Then, a SAR image in a high resolution is generated for a trihedral comer reflector located on a background clutter by superposition of the two SAR images. The radar cross section of a trihedral corner reflector in the SAR image is retrieved by integrating the radar signals of the pixels adjacent to the reflector for various size of the integration area. By comparison of the measured RCS by the integration method and the theoretical RCS of the reflector, the effect of the size of the integration area on the extraction of the calibration constant is examined.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.30 no.6_1
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• pp.519-528
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• 2012

It was pointed out that the terrain distortion of SAR image is even worse than that of optical image although SAR imagery has the advantages of being independent of solar illumination and weather conditions. It is thus necessary to correct terrain distortion in SAR image for various application areas to integrate SAR and optical image information. There has to be a clear evaluation of terrain correction of high resolution SAR image according to the quality of DEM because the DEM of study site is generally used in the process of terrain correction. To achieve this issue, this paper compared the effects of quality of Digital Elevation Model(DEM) in the process of terrain correction of high resolution SAR images, using the DEM produced from 1:5000 topographic contour maps, LiDAR DEM, ASTER GDEM, SRTM DEM. We used TerraSAR-X and Cosmo-SkyMed, as the test data set, which are constructed on the same X-band SAR system as KOMPSAT-5. In order to evaluate quantitatively the correction results, we conducted comparative evaluation with the KOMPSAT-2 ortho image of the same region. The evaluation results showed that the DEM produced from 1:5000 topographic contour maps achieved successful results in the terrain correction of SAR image compared with the other DEM data, and the widely used SRTM DEM data in various applications was not suitable for the terrain correction of high resolution SAR images.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.227-244
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• 2015

Synthetic Aperture Radar is able to provide images of wide coverage in day, night, and all-weather conditions. Recently, as the SAR image resolution improves up to the sub-meter level, their applications are rapidly expanding accordingly. Especially there is a growing interest in the use of geographic information of high resolution SAR images and the change detection will be one of the most important technique for their applications. In this paper, an automatic threshold tracking and change detection algorithm is proposed applicable to high-resolution SAR images. To detect changes within SAR image, a reference image is generated using log-ratio operator and its amplitude distribution is estimated through K-S test. Assuming SAR image has a non-gaussian amplitude distribution, a generalized thresholding technique is applied using Kittler and Illingworth minimum-error estimation. Also, MoLC parametric estimation method is adopted to improve the algorithm performance on rough ground target. The implemented algorithm is tested and verified on the simulated SAR raw data. Then, it is applied to the spaceborne high-resolution SAR images taken by Cosmo-Skymed and KOMPSAT-5 and the performances are analyzed and compared.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.75-86
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• 2012

Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR) imaging system is independent of solar illumination and weather conditions; however, SAR image is difficult to interpret as compared with optical images. It has been increased interest in multi-sensor fusion technique which can improve the interpretability of $SAR^{\circ\circ}$ images by fusing the spectral information from multispectral(MS) image. In this paper, a multi-sensor fusion method based on high-frequency extraction process using Fast Fourier Transform(FFT) and outlier elimination process is proposed, which maintain the spectral content of the original MS image while retaining the spatial detail of the high-resolution SAR image. We used TerraSAR-X which is constructed on the same X-band SAR system as KOMPSAT-5 and KOMPSAT-2 MS image as the test data set to evaluate the proposed method. In order to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed method, the fusion result was compared visually and quantitatively with the result obtained using existing fusion algorithms. The evaluation results showed that the proposed image fusion method achieved successful results in the fusion of SAR and MS image compared with the existing fusion algorithms.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.49-60
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• 2012

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has been employed in various fields due to its capability to generate high resolution images regardless of weather and visibility. This paper presents a performance analysis on the image formation of high resolution SAR according to various slant range distance and synthetic aperture lengths using a range migration algorithm simulator. Although the visual performance on the SAR image is more accurate, a numeric analysis resulted in a comparable measurement. More specifically, raw data were generated for an ideal point target upon imaging geometries and design parameters such as slant range distance and synthetic aperture lengths. Finally, spatial resolution, peak to sidelobe ratio and integrated sidelobe ratio are drawn to provide SAR capabilities in the initial concept design, final in-flight calibration and validation stages.