• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.157-175
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• 2000

A synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system is able to provide all-weather, day-and- night superior imaging capability of the earth surface, and thus is extremely useful in surveillance for both civil and military applications. In this paper, the X-band high resolution spaceborne SAR system design is demonstrated with the key design performance for a given mission and system requirements characterized by the small satellite system. The SAR multi-mode imaging technique is presented with a critical parameter assessment, and the standard mode results are analyzed in terms of the image quality performances. In line with the system requirement X-band SAR payload and ground reception/processing subsystems are designed and the major design results are presented with the key performance characteristics. This small satellite SAR system shows the wide range of imaging capability with high resolution, and proves to be an effective surveillance systems in the light weight, high performance and cost-effective points of view.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry, and Cartography Conference
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• 2004.04a
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• pp.337-343
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• 2004

Spatial information could be obtained from spaceborne high resolution optical and synthetic aperture radar(SAR) images. However, some satellite images do not provide physical sensor information instead, rational polynomial coefficients(RPC) are available. The objectives of this study are: (1) 3-dimensional ground coordinates were computed by applying rational function model(RFM) with the RPC for the stereo pair of Ikonos images and their accuracy was evaluated. (2) Interferometric SAR(InSAR) was applied to JERS-1 images to generate DEM and its accuracy was analysis. (3) Quality of the DEM generated automatically also analyzed for different types of terrain in the study site. The overall accuracy was evaluated by comparing with GPS surveying data. The height offset in the RPC was corrected by estimating bias. In consequence, the accuracy was improved. Accuracy of the DEMs generated from InSAR with different selection of GCP was analyzed. In case of the Ikonos images, the results show that the overall RMSE was 0.23327", 0.l1625" and 13.70m in latitude, longitude and height, respectively. The height accuracy was improved after correcting the height offset in the RPC. i.e., RMSE of the height was 1.02m. As for the SAR image, RMSE of the height was 10.50m with optimal selection of GCP. For the different terrain types, the RMSE of the height for urban, forest and flat area was 23.65m, 8.54m, 0.99m, respectively for Ikonos image while the corresponding RMSE was 13.82m, 18.34m, 10.88m, respectively lot SAR image.

• 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.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.111-114
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• 2004

Object-based segmentation is the first essential step for image processing applications. Recently, SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) segmentation techniques have been developed, however not enough to preserve the significant information contained in the small regions of the images. The proposed method is to partition an SAR image into homogeneous regions by using a fuzzy hit-or-miss operator with an inherent spatial transformation, which endows to preserve the small regions. In our algorithm, an iterative segmentation technique is formulated as a consequential process. Then, each time in iterating, hypothesis testing is used to evaluate the quality of the segmented regions with a homogeneity index. The segmentation algorithm is unsupervised and employed few parameters, most of which can be calculated from the input data. This comparative study indicates that the new iterative segmentation algorithm provides acceptable results as seen in the tested examples of satellite images.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.166-172
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• 2018

To develop and evaluate the real-time SAR(Synthetic Aperture Radar) motion measurement system, true antenna phase center(APC) positions during SAT(Synthetic Aperture Time) are needed. In this paper, CDGPS(Carrier phase Differential Global Positioning System) post processing method is proposed to get the true APC position for spotlight SAR image formation. The CDGPS position is smoothed to remove high frequency noise which exists inherently in the carrier phase measurement. This paper shows smoothed CDGPS data is enough to provide the true APC for high-quality SAR image formation through motion measurement result, phase error estimation and IRF(Impulse Response Function) analysis.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.47 no.8
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• pp.566-573
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• 2019

In order to obtain high-quality images by motion compensation in the airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR), accurate motion sensing in image acquisition section is necessary. Especially, reducing relative position error and discontinuity in motion sensing is important. To overcome the problem, we propose a pre-parametric error modeling (P-PEM) algorithm which is a real-time motion sensing algorithm for the airborne SAR in this paper. P-PEM is an extended version of parametric error modeling (PEM) method which is a motion sensing algorithm to mitigate the errors in the previous work. PEM estimates polynomial coefficients of INS error which can be assumed as a polynomial in the short term. Otherwise, P-PEM estimates polynomial coefficients in advance and uses at image acquisition section. Simulation results show that the P-PEM reduces relative position error and discontinuity effectively in real-time.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.42 no.7
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• pp.601-609
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• 2014

Large number of SAR(Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellites, one type of earth observation satellite, have been developed as they have the advantage of not being affected by surrounding environment during the earth image acquisition. In order to gain high image quality, SAR antenna should have large diameter. However, internal space of satellite launch vehicle is limited and this leads SAR antenna to be designed deployable so that it can be folded in launch vehicle and unfolded in space. In this research, values of various design factors of deployable satellite antenna were chosen considering satellite's target mission. Configuration of deployable satellite antenna was designed by applying the chosen values of design factors, and variation in deployable satellite antenna during satellite maneuver was observed through simulation.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.187-196
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• 2017

The size of raw data has dramatically increased due to the recent trend of Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR) development plans for high resolution and high definition image acquisition. The large raw data has an impact on satellite operability due to the limitations of storage and transmission capacity. To improve the SAR operability, the SAR raw data shall be compressed before transmission to the ground station. The Block Adaptive Quantization (BAQ) algorithm is one of the data compression algorithm and has been used for a long time in the spaceborne SAR system. In this paper, an optimization method of BAQ threshold table is introduced using real SAR raw data to prevent the degradation of signal quality caused by data compression. In this manner, a new variation estimation strategy and a new threshold method for block type decision are introduced.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.11 no.7
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• pp.1258-1270
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• 2000

A synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system is able to provide all-weather, day-and-night, high resolution imaging capability in the wide area of interest, and thus is extremely useful in surveillance for both civil and military applications. In this paper, the X-band high-resolution spaceborne SAR system design is described with the key design parameters for the mission and system requirement characterized by the small satellite platform. The SAR imaging mode design technique is presented, and the standard imaging mode design results are analyzed with respect to image quality performance. In line with the system requirement, X-band SAR payload and ground reception/processing subsystems are designed and the key design results are demonstrated with the outstanding performance characteristics. The designed small satellite SAR system shows the wide range of imaging capability, and proves to be an effective surveillance systems in the light weight, high performance and cost-effective points of view.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.27 no.9
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• pp.854-864
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• 2016

The use of small drone platform has become a popular topic in these days but its application for SAR operation has been little known due to the burden of the payload implementation. Drone platforms are distinguished from the conventional UAV system by the increased vulnerability to the turbulences, control-errors and poor motion stability. Consequently, sophisticated motion compensation may be required to guarantee the successful acquisition of high quality SAR imagery. Extremely limited power and mass budgets may prevent the use of additional hardwares for motion compensation and the difficulty of SAR focusing is further aggravated. In this paper, we have carried out a feasibility study of mico-SAR drone operation. We present the image acquisition results from the preliminary flight tests and a quality assessment is followed on the experimental SAR images. The in-flight motion errors derived from the unique drone movements are investigated and attempts have been made to compensate for the geometrical and phase errors caused by motions against the nominal trajectory. Finally, the successful operation of drone SAR system is validated through the focussed SAR images taken over test sites.