• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.229-241
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• 2024

With the advancement of big data processing technology using cloud platforms, access, processing, and analysis of large-volume data such as satellite imagery have recently been significantly improved. In this study, the Change Detection Method, a relatively simple technique for retrieving soil moisture, was applied to the backscattering coefficient values of pre-processed Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite imagery product based on Google Earth Engine (GEE), one of those platforms, to estimate the surface soil moisture for six observatories within the Yongdam Dam watershed in South Korea for the period of 2015 to 2023, as well as the watershed average. Subsequently, a correlation analysis was conducted between the estimated values and actual measurements, along with an examination of the applicability of GEE. The results revealed that the surface soil moisture estimated for small areas within the soil moisture observatories of the watershed exhibited low correlations ranging from 0.1 to 0.3 for both VH and VV polarizations, likely due to the inherent measurement accuracy of the SAR satellite imagery and variations in data characteristics. However, the surface soil moisture average, which was derived by extracting the average SAR backscattering coefficient values for the entire watershed area and applying moving averages to mitigate data uncertainties and variability, exhibited significantly improved results at the level of 0.5. The results obtained from estimating soil moisture using GEE demonstrate its utility despite limitations in directly conducting desired analyses due to preprocessed SAR data. However, the efficient processing of extensive satellite imagery data allows for the estimation and evaluation of soil moisture over broad ranges, such as long-term watershed averages. This highlights the effectiveness of GEE in handling vast satellite imagery datasets to assess soil moisture. Based on this, it is anticipated that GEE can be effectively utilized to assess long-term variations of soil moisture average in major dam watersheds, in conjunction with soil moisture observation data from various locations across the country in the future.

• 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.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.104-123
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• 2001

Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR) can provide radar imagery in all weather, day and night situations. Recently SAR system consisted of several imaging modes, has been used for not only military purpose, but also commercial and scientific applications. This paper firstly reviews spaceborne SAR theory, specially scansar principle, and secondly the theories and the design procedures of system performance analysis in the scansar mode, which are different from the ones in the conventional stripmap mode. Based on the SAR-related knowledge, it lastly derives the results of performance analysis in wide swath mode using the scansar technique at the design phase. It shows that these results can meet the system requirements as given the customer. In future, they will continuously be updated using the real measurement data, in connection with the development of a spaceborne SAR system.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.427-435
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• 2000

It is often crucial to obtain a map of flood inundated area with more accurate and rapid manner. This study attempts to evaluate the potential of satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data for mapping of flood inundated area in Imjin river basin. Multitemporal RADARSAT SAR data of three different dates were obtained at the time of flooding on August 4 and before and after the flooding. Once the data sets were geometrically corrected and preprocessed, the temporal characteristics of relative radar backscattering were analyzed. By comparing the radar backscattering of several surface features, it was clear that the flooded rice paddy showed the distinctive temporal pattern of radar response. Flooded rice paddy showed significantly lower radar signal while the normally growing rice paddy show high radar returns, which also could be easily interpreted from the color composite imagery. In addition to delineating the flooded rice fields, the multitemporal radar imagery also allow us to distinguish the afterward condition of once-flooded rice field.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.22 no.11
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• pp.1063-1069
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• 2011

NCTR(Non-Cooperative Target Recognition) and ATR(Automatic Target Recognition) are methodologies to identify military targets using radar, optical, and infrared images. Among them, a strategy to recognize ground targets using synthetic aperature radar(SAR) images is called SAR ATR. In general, SAR ATR consists of three sequential stages: detection, discrimination and classification. In this paper, a modification of the polar mapping classifier(PMC) to identify inverse SAR(ISAR) images has been made in order to apply it to SAR ATR. In addition, a preprocessing scheme can mitigate the effect from the clutter, and information on the shadow is employed to improve the classification accuracy.

• Proceedings of KOSOMES biannual meeting
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.41-45
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• 2006

From the 1978 Seasat synthetic aperture radar(SAR) to present systems, spaceborne SAR has demonstrated the capability to image the Earth's ocean and land features over broad areas, day and night, and under most weather conditions. The application of SAR for surveillance of commercial fishing grounds can did in the detection of illegal fishing activities and provides more efficient use cf limited aircraft or patron craft resources. In the area of vessel traffic monitoring for commercial vessels, Vessel Traffic Service (VTS) which uses the ground-based radar system has some difficulties in detecting moving ships due to the limited detection range cf about 10 miles. This paper introduces the field testing results of ship detection by RADARSAT SAR imagery, and proposes a new approach for a Vessel Monitoring System(VMS), including VTS, and SAR combination service.

• Proceedings of KOSOMES biannual meeting
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.127-132
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• 2007

From the 1978 Seasat synthetic aperture radar(SAR) to present systems, spaceborne SAR has demonstrated the capability to image the Earth's ocean and land features over broad areas, day and night, and under most weather conditions. The application of SAR for surveillance of commercial fishing grounds can aid in the detection of illegal fishing activities and provides more efficient use of limited aircraft or patrol craft resources. In the area of vessel traffic monitoring for commercial vessels, Vessel Traffic Service (VTS) which uses the ground-based radar system has some difficulties in detecting moving ships due to the limited detection range of about 10 miles. This paper introduces the field testing results of ship detection by RADARSAT SAR imagery, and proposes a new approach for a Vessel Monitoring System(VMS), including VTS, and SAR combination service.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.12-21
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• 2021

For successful automatic target recognition(ATR) with synthetic aperture radar(SAR) imagery, SAR target images of the database should have the identical or highly similar resolution with those collected from SAR sensors. However, it is time-consuming or infeasible to construct the multiple databases with different resolutions depending on the operating SAR system. In this paper, an approach for resolution conversion of SAR target images is proposed based on conditional generative adversarial network(cGAN). First, a number of pairs consisting of SAR target images with two different resolutions are obtained via SAR simulation and then used to train the cGAN model. Finally, the model generates the SAR target image whose resolution is converted from the original one. The similarity analysis is performed to validate reliability of the generated images. The cGAN model is further applied to measured MSTAR SAR target images in order to estimate its potential for real application.

• 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.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• v.2
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• pp.981-984
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• 2006

Oil pollution of the ocean is a major environmental problem, especially in its coastal zones. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) flown on satellites, such as ERS-2 and Envisat, has been proved to be a useful tool in oil spill monitoring due to its wide coverage, day and night, and all-weather capability. The total 120 SAR images containing oil spill over the East China Sea were collected and analyzed, ranging in date from July 23, 2002 to November 11, 2005. After preprocessed, SAR images were segmented by adaptive threshold method. The oil spill images were incorporated into GIS after distinguished from look-like phenomena, finally we presented the oil spills distribution map for the East China Sea. The wide-swath and quick-looks SAR imagery for mapping of oil spill distribution over large marine areas were proved to be useful when full resolution data are not available. After the temporal and spatial distribution of the oil spills were analyzed, we found that most of oil spills were distributed along the main ship routes, which means the illegal discharge by ships, and the occurrence of oil spill detected on SAR images acquired during morning and summer is much higher than during evening and winter.