• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.171-180
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• 2011

MAI (multiple aperture SAR interferometry) method has been recently developed to improve the measurement accuracy of along-track surface deformation. By means of split-beam SAR processing, this novel technique produces forward- and backward-looking interferograms, which are combined to generate an MAI interferogram. The along-track surface deformation can then be derived from the MAI interferogram. The achieved accuracy of the along-track surface deformation is approximately 8 cm for interferograms with a coherence of 0.6. It is commonly recognized that the topographic phase on an MAI interferogram can be ignored. However, in this paper, we have generated an MAI interferogram from an ALOS P ALSAR interferometric pair spanning the 2010 Haiti earthquake, and shown that the topographic phase distortion on the MAI interferogram can reach to about $3.45{\times}10^{-4}$ rad./m. This distortion corresponds to an along-track surface deformation of about 98 cm. We have proposed an efficient method to remove the topographic phase distortion. After correcting the distortion, the topographic phase distortion on the MAI interferogram is reduced to about $7.82{\times}10^{-6}$ rad./m. This means that the proposed method can effectively remove the topographic distortion on the MAI interferogram to improve along-track surface deformation measurement.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.52 no.4
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• pp.313-322
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• 2019

SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) remote sensing data is a very useful tool for near-real-time identification of landslide affected areas that can occur over a large area due to heavy rains or typhoons. This study aims to develop an effective algorithm for automatically delineating landslide areas from the polarimetric SAR data acquired after the landslide event. To detect landslides from SAR observations, reduction of the speckle effects in the estimation of polarimetric SAR parameters and the orthorectification of geometric distortions on sloping terrain are essential processing steps. Based on the experimental analysis, it was found that the IDAN filter can provide a better estimation of the polarimetric parameters. In addition, it was appropriate to apply orthorectification process after estimating polarimetric parameters in the slant range domain. Furthermore, it was found that the polarimetric entropy is the most appropriate parameters among various polarimetric parameters. Based on those analyses, we proposed an automatic landslide detection algorithm using the histogram thresholding of the polarimetric parameters with the aid of terrain slope information. The landslide detection algorithm was applied to the ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 data which observed landslide areas in Japan triggered by Typhoon in September 2011. Experimental results showed that the landslide areas were successfully identified by using the proposed algorithm with a detection rate of about 82% and a false alarm rate of about 3%.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.34 no.6_4
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• pp.1489-1501
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• 2018

In 2016 Kumamoto, Japan, the foreshocks of $M_j$ 6.5 and 6.4, mainshock of $M_j$ 7.3 besides more than 2,000 aftershocks occurred in succession. Large surface deformation occurred due to this serial earthquakes and three-dimensional measurements of the deformation have been presented for the study of fault structures (Baek, 2017). The 3d measurements retrieved from two ascending pairs (20160211_20160602, 20151119_20160616) and a descending pair (20160307_20160418) acquired from ALOS PALSAR-2. In order to avoid mixing ionospheric error components on along-track surface deformation, the descending multiple-aperture interferogram, which do not contain the deformation of aftershocks after 20160418, was utilized. For these reason, there was a temporal discrepancy of about 2 months in extracting the north-south deformation. In this study, we applied a directional filter based ionospheric correction to ascending multiple-aperture interferograms, in order to reduce this discrepancy and understand more accurate fault movements. As a result of the ionospheric correction, an additional displacement signal was observed nearby fault lines. The root-mean-squared errors compared to GPS were about 9.87, 8.13 cm respectively. These results show improvements of 4.8 and 6.4 times after ionospheric correction. We expected that these along-track measurements would be used to decide more accurate movements of faults related to the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake.

• Journal of Satellite, Information and Communications
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.63-68
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• 2017

SAR(Synthetic Aperture Radar) uses electromagnetic signals to acquire ground information and has been used for wide coverage reconnaissance missions regardless of weather conditions. However SAR is known to be vulnerable to interference signals by other communication devices or radar instruments and may suffer from undesirable performance degradations and image quality. In this paper, a modified Eigen-subspace based filter is proposed that can be easily applied to SAR images affected by interference signals. The method of constructing Eigen-subspace based filter is briefly described and various simulations are performed to show the performance of the interference mitigation process. The suppression filter is applied to a ALOS PALSAR raw data affected by interfering signals in order to verify its superiority over the Notch filter.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.47-60
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• 2017

The permafrost active layer plays an important role in permafrost dynamics. Ecological patterns, processes, and water and ice contents in the active layer are spatially and temporally complex depending on landscape heterogeneity and local-scale variations in hydrological processes. Although there has been emerging interest in the application of optical remote sensing techniques to permafrost environments, optical sensors are significantly limited in accessing information on near surface geo-cryological conditions. The primary objective of this study was to investigate capability of L-band SAR data for monitoring spatio-temporal variability of permafrost ecosystems and underlying soil conditions. This study exploits information from different polarimetric SAR observables in relation to permafrost environmental conditions. Experimental results show that each polarimetric radar observable conveys different information on permafrost environments. In the case of the dual-pol mode, the radar observables consist of two backscattering powers and one correlation coefficient between polarimetric channels. Among them, the dual-pol scattering powers are highly sensitive to freeze/thaw transition and can discriminate grasslands or ponds in thermokarst area from other permafrost ecosystems. However, it is difficult to identify the ground conditions with dual-pol observables. Additional backscattering powers and correlation coefficients obtained from quad-pol mode help understanding seasonal variations ofradar scattering and assessing geo-cryological information on soil layers. In particular, co-pol coherences atHV-basis and circular-basis were found to be very usefultools for mapping and monitoring near surface soil properties.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.368-368
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• 2008

Oil spills are a principal factor of the ocean pollution. The complicated problems involved in detecting oil spills are usually due to varying wind and sea surface condition such as ocean wave and current. The Hebei Spirit accident was happened in the west sea ($36^{\circ}$41'04" N, $126^{\circ}$03'12" E) near about 8 km distant from Tae-An, Korea on December 7, 2007. The aim of this work is to improve the detection and classification performance in order to define a more accurate training set and identifying the feature of oil spill region. This paper deals with an optimization technique for the detection and classification scheme using multi-frequency and multi-polarization SAR and optical image data sets of the oil spilled sea. The used image data are the ENVISAT ASAR WS and Radarsat-1 of C-band and ALOS PALSAR of L-band SAR data and KOMPSAT-2 optical images together with meteorological or oceanographic data. Both the theory and the experimental results obtained are discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.195-206
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• 2016

The remote sensing technique using SAR data have many advantages when applied to the disaster site due to its wide coverage and all-weather acquisition availability. Although a single-pol (polarimetric) SAR image cannot represent the land surface better than a quad-pol SAR image can, single-pol SAR data are worth using for disaster-induced change detection. In this paper, an automatic change detection method based on a mixture of GGDs (generalized Gaussian distribution) is proposed, and usability of the textural features and intensity is evaluated by using the proposed method. Three ALOS/PALSAR images were used in the experiments, and the study site was Norita City, which was affected by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. The experiment results showed that the proposed automatic change detection method is practical for disaster sites where the large areas change. The intensity information is useful for detecting disaster-induced changes with a 68.3% g-mean, but the texture information is not. The autocorrelation and correlation show the interesting implication that they tend not to extract agricultural areas in the change detection map. Therefore, the final tsunami-induced change map is produced by the combination of three maps: one is derived from the intensity information and used as an initial map, and the others are derived from the textural information and used as auxiliary data.

• Geosciences Journal
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.1069-1080
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• 2018

The Alaskan Aleutian Islands form one of the world's largest volcanic island chains. The islands are exposed to both direct and indirect damage from continuous volcanic eruptions. Surface deformation is mostly observed before volcanic eruption, but with some volcanoes, such as Ontake Volcano, deformations cannot be detected. In this study, we analyzed volcanic eruptions in the Alaskan Aleutian Islands, which is a region of frequent volcanic eruptions. Based on our results, we predicted the type of eruption that would occur on Baekdusan Volcano according to the presence or absence of surface deformation. For this purpose, 10 sites were selected from areas where recent volcanic activity had occurred in the Aleutian Islands. Additionally, Advanced Land Observing Satellite Phased Array-type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (ALOS-PALSAR) and European Remote Sensing (ERS)-1/2 satellite data were obtained from 10 experimental sites. Based on the radar satellite data, the volcanic surface deformations were identified, and the characteristics of the volcanic eruption were quantitatively calculated by determining the presence of surface deformation. The results of this study should facilitate the process of correlation between volcanic eruption and surface deformation.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.365-374
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• 2017

SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) is an effective tool for monitoring areas damaged by disasters. Full PolSAR (Polarimetric SAR) enhances SAR's capabilities by providing specific scattering mechanisms. Thus, full PolSAR data have been widely used to analyze the situation when disasters occur. To interpret full PolSAR data, model-based decomposition methods are frequently used due to its easy physical interpretation of PolSAR data and computational efficiency. However, these methods present problems. One of the key problems is the overestimation of the volume scattering component. To minimize the volume scattering component, the OA (Orientation Angle) compensation method is widely utilized. This paper shows that the effect of the OA compensation was analyzed over landslide affected areas. In this paper, the OA compensation is applied by using the OA estimated from the maximum relative Hellinger distance. We conducted an experiment using two full polarimetric ALOS/PALSAR (Advanced Land Observing Satellite/Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar)-2 data collected over Mocoa, Colombia which was seriously damaged by the 2017 Mocoa landslide. After OA compensation, the experimental results showed volume scattering power decreased, while the double-bounce and surface scattering power increased. Particularly, significant changes were noted in urban areas. In addition, after OA compensation, the separability of the double-bounce and surface scattering components are improved over the damaged building areas. Furthermore, changes in the OA can discriminate visually between the damaged building areas and undamaged areas. In conclusion, we demonstrated that the effect of OA compensation improved the influence of the double-bounce and surface scattering components, and OA changes can be useful for detecting damaged building areas.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.37-46
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• 2017

Sinabung volcano in Indonesia was formed due to the subduction between the Eurasian and Indo-Australian plates along the Pacific Ring of Fire. After being dormant for about 400 years, Sinabung volcano erupted on the 29th of August, 2010 and most recently on the 1st of November, 2016. We measured the deformation of Sinabung volcano using Advanced Land Observing Satellite/Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar(ALOS/PALSAR) interferometric synthetic aperture radar(InSAR) images acquired from February 2007 to January 2011. Based on multi-temporal InSAR processing, we mapped the ground surface deformation before, during, and after the 2010 eruption with time-series InSAR technique. During the 3 years before the 2010 eruption, the volcano inflated at an average rate of ~1.7 cm/yr with a markedly higher rate of 6.6 cm/yr during the 6 months prior to the 2010 eruption. The inflation was constrained to the top of the volcano. From the 2010 eruption to January 2011,the volcano subsided by approximately 3 cm (~6 cm/yr). We interpreted that the inflation was due to magma accumulation in a shallow reservoir beneath Sinabung. The deflation was attributed to magma withdrawal from the shallow reservoir during the eruption as well as thermo-elastic compaction of erupted material. This result demonstrates once again the utility of InSAR for volcano monitoring.