• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.62-67
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• 2018

A wave buoy commonly used for measurements in marine environments is very useful for measurements on the sea surface wind and waves. However, it is constantly exposed to external forces such as typhoons and the risk of accidents caused by ships. Therefore, the installation and maintenance charges are large and constant. In this study, we developed a system for monitoring the sea surface wind using marine radar to provide spatial and temporal information about sea surface waves at a small cost. The essential technology required for this system is radar signal processing. This paper also describes the analytical process of using it for monitoring the sea surface wind. Consequently, developing this system will make it possible to replace wave buoys in the near future.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.141-148
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• 2016

This paper proposes a method to estimate directly the incoherent scattered intensity and radar cross section (RCS) from the effective permittivity of a random media. The proposed method is derived from the original concept of incoherent scattering. The incoherent scattered field is expressed as a simple formula. Therefore, to reduce computation time, the proposed method can estimate the incoherent scattered intensity and RCS of a random media. To verify the potential of the proposed method for the desired applications, we conducted a Monte-Carlo analysis using the method of moments; we characterized the accuracy of the proposed method using the normalized mean square error (NMSE). In addition, several medium parameters, such as the density of scatterers and analysis volume, were studied to understand their effect on the scattering characteristics of a random media. The results of the Monte-Carlo analysis show good agreement with those of the proposed method, and the NMSE values of the proposed method and Monte-Carlo analysis are relatively small at less than 0.05.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.1340-1342
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• 2003

In microwave remote sensing, the Fresnel reflectance formula is widely used in the sea surface emissivity modeling. As an essential contribution to microwave remote sensing, a new formula on the Fresnel reflectance has been derived based on our understanding of the complex index of refraction and continuity condition of E-M waves at the interface between two mediums. The proposed formula can be used to obtain the emissivity of sea surface, which is useful to retrieve sea surface temperature, sea surface salinity and the brightness temperature. Considering Bragg-resonant scatter, it is useful for the calculation of the normalized radar cross-section, and the retrieval of sea surface wind either.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.297-304
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• 2010

Since the change in Doppler centroid according to moving targets brings alteration to the phase in azimuth differential signals of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data, one can measure the velocity of the moving targets using this effect. In this study, we will investigate theoretically measuring the velocity of an object from azimuth differential signals by using range compressed data which is the interim outcome of treatment from the simulated SAR raw data of moving targets on the background of sea clutter. Also, it will provide evaluation for the elements that affect the estimation error of velocity from a single SAR sensor. By making RADARSAT-1 simulated image as a specific case, the research includes comparisons for the means of velocity measurement classified by the directions of movement in the four following cases. 1. A case of a single target without currents, 2. A case of a single target with tidal currents of 0.5 m/s, 1 m/s, and 3 m/s, 3. A case of two targets on a same azimuth line moving in a same direction and velocity, 4. A case of a single target contiguous to land where radar backscatter is strong. As a result, when two moving targets exist in SAR image outside the range of approximately 256 pixels, the velocity of the object can be measured with high accuracy. However, when other moving targets exist in the range of approximately 128 pixels or when the target was contiguous to the land of strong backscatter coefficient (NRCS: normalized radar cross section), the estimated velocity was in error by 10% at the maximum. This is because in the process of assuming the target's location, an error occurs due to the differential signals affected by other scatterers.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.729-741
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• 2011

Wind speeds have long been estimated from C-band VV-polarized SAR data by using the CMOD algorithms such as CMOD4, CMOD5, and CMOD_IFR2. Some SAR data with HH-polarization without any observations in VV-polarization mode should be converted to VV-polarized value in order to use the previous algorithms based on VV-polarized observation. To satisfy the necessity of polarization ratio (PR) for the conversion, we retrieved the conversion parameter from full-polarized SIR-C SAR image off the east coast of Korea. The polarization ratio for SIR-C SAR data was estimated to 0.47. To assess the accuracy of the polarization ratio coefficient, pseudo VV-polarized normalized radar cross section (NRCS) values were calculated and compared with the original VV-polarized ones. As a result, the estimated psudo values showed a good agreement with the original VV-polarized data with an root mean square error by 0.99 dB. We applied the psudo NRCS to the estimation of wind speeds based on the CMOD wind models. Comparison of the retrieved wind field with the ECMWF and NCEP/NCAR reanalysis wind data showed relatively small rms errors of 1.88 and 1.91 m/s, respectively. SIR-C HH-polarized SAR wind retrievals met the requirement of the scatterometer winds in overall. However, the polarization ratio coefficient revealed dependence on NRCS value, wind speed, and incident angle.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 1999.11a
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• pp.485-490
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• 1999

Wind vector information over the ocean is currently obtained using multiple beam scatterometer data. The scatterometers on ERS-1/2 generate wind vector information with a spatial resolution of 50km and accuracies of $\pm$2m/s in wind speed and $\pm$20$^{\circ}$ in wind direction. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data over the ocean have the potential of providing wind vector information independent of weather conditions with finer resolution. Finer resolution wind vector information can often be useful particularly in coastal regions where the scatterometer wind information is often corrupted because of the lower resolution system characteristics which is often contaminated by the signal returns from the coastal areas or ice in the case of arctic environments. In this paper we tested CMOD_4 and CMOD_IFR2 algorithms for extracting the wind vector from SAR data. These algorithms require precise estimation of normalized radar cross-section and wind direction from the SAR data and the local incidence angle. The CMOD series algorithms were developed for the C-band, VV-Polarized SAR data, typically for the ERS SAR data. Since RADARSAT operates at the same C-band but with HH-Polarization, the CMOD series algorithms should not be used directly. As a preliminary approach of resolving with this problem, we applied the polarization ratio between the HH and VV polarizations in the wind vectors estimation. Two test areas, one in front of Inchon and several sites around Jeju island were selected and investigated for wind vector estimation. The new results were compared with the wind vectors obtained from CMOD algorithms. The wind vector results agree well with the observed wind speed data. However the estimation of wind direction agree with the observed wind direction only when the wind speed is greater than approximately 3.0m/s.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.35 no.6_4
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• pp.1373-1389
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• 2019

KOMPSAT-5 is the first satellite in Korea equipped with X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) instrument and has been operated since August 2013. KOMPSAT-5 is used to monitor the global environment according to its observation purpose and the availability of KOMPSAT-5 is also highlighted as the need of high resolution wind data for investigating the coastal region. However, the previous study for the validation of wind derived from KOMPSAT-5 showed that the accuracy is lower than that of other SAR satellites. Therefore, in this study, we developed the correction equation of normalized radar cross section (NRCS or backscattering coefficient) for improvement of wind from the KOMPSAT-5 and validated the effect of the equation using the in-situ measurement of ocean buoys. Theoretical estimated NRCS and observed NRCS from KOMPSAT-5 showed linear relationship with incidence angle. Before applying the correction equation, the accuracy of the estimated wind speed showed the relatively high root-mean-square errors (RMSE) of 2.89 m s^-1 and bias of -0.55 m s^-1. Such high errors were significantly reduced to the RMSE of 1.60 m s^-1 and bias of -0.38 m s^-1 after applying the correction equation. The improvement effect of the correction equation showed dependency relying on the range of incidence angle.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.475-487
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• 2010

Sea surface wind field was retrieved from high-resolution SIR-C SAR data by using CMOD algorithms off the east coast of Korea. In order to extract wind direction information from SAR data, a two-dimensional spectral analysis method was applied to the normalized radar cross section of the image. An $180^{\circ}$-ambiguity problem in the determination of wind direction was solved by selecting a direction nearest to the wind vector of the ECMWF reanalysis data. Comparison of the wind retrieval patterns with the ECMWF and NCEP/NCAR dataset showed RMS errors in the range of 1.30 to $1.72\;ms^{-1}$. In contrast, comparison of wind directions revealed large errors of greater than $60^{\circ}$, which is enormously higher than the permitted limit of about $20^{\circ}$ for satellite scatterometer winds. Compared with wind speed results from different algorithms, wind vectors based on commonly-used CMOD4 algorithm showed good agreement with those derived by other algorithms such as CMOD_IFR2 and CMOD5, particularly at medium winds from 4 to $8\;ms^{-1}$. However, apparent discrepancy appeared at low winds (< $4\;ms^{-1}$). This study also addressed an importance of accurate wind direction data to improve the accuracy of wind speed retrieval and discussed potential causes of wind retrieval errors from SAR data.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.428-435
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• 2004

With the rapid and wide-spread use of cellular telephones much attention has been focussed on propagation in the urban area crowed with buildings and houses. It is often surrounded by hills, forests, and mountains. The importance of surface scattering intereference between transmitters and receivers on the rough surfaces has been interested and investigated. Therefore, a prediction method is necessary to estimate the influence of rough surfaces on microwave radio propagation. Moreover, most of the mobile communications are performed based on the digital communication system rather than the analog one. In this case, we must pay more careful attention to the signal delay caused by the phase delay due to the multi-path propagation. In this paper we have analyzed numerically scattering of electromagnetic waves from building walls by using FVTD(Finite Volume Time Domain) method. We consider three different types of rough surfaces such as periodic, random, and composite structures. We calculate the bistatic normalized radar cross section (NRCS) for horizontal and vertical polarization, and we take account of the conventional optical reflection which corresponds to the n-th Bragg reflection for periodic structures. In addition, we investigated what conditions are needed in order to be able to ignore the higher order Bragg reflection for the periodic structures.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.325-342
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• 1998

Two RADARSAT SAR images with different modes acquired by Canadian Space Agency to test the effectiveness of geological lineament extraction and spring water detection over the Cheju Island. Geological lineaments are poorly developed this basalt dominant volcanic island, but more linear features can be extracted when SAR and TM images are simultaneously analyzed than when TM image alone is used. This results mainly owe to the facts that RADARSAT SAR systems are able to provide data with different frequencies, azimuth, and incidence angles. Distribution of spring water along coast is poorly correlated with geological lineaments or drainage pattern, but those in middle range of mountain region are developed along geological lineaments. Detection of spring water using remotely sensed images are turned out to be very difficult to achieve. Radial shaped sea surface temperature anomaly derived from TM thermal band should be the best candidate for spring water, but the resolution is not high enough. We also investigate the normalized radar cross section (or sigma naught) converted from RADARSAT and ERS-1 SAR data but to discriminate the spring water effectively except where relatively large water mass is observed on land side. Speckle noise and irregularity in physical sea surface condition are the serious obstacles for this application. ERS-1 SAR image acquired in low incidence angle was more useful for geological lineament estimation and water body study than RADARSAT SAR images with high incidence angles. Therefore the selection of incidence angle is critical in geological and spring water applications of SAR images, and low incidence angles less than about 30$^{\circ}$ are recommended to monitor the Cheju volcanic island.