• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
• /
• v.18 no.2
• /
• pp.334-343
• /
• 2017

The optimum design of an SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite constellation is developed herein using a genetic algorithm. The performance of Earth observations using a satellite constellation can be improved by minimizing the maximum revisit time. Classical orbit design using analytic methods has limitations when addressing orbit dynamics due to various disturbances. To overcome this issue, an optimization technique based on a genetic algorithm is used. STK (Systems Tool Kit) is utilized to propagate the satellite orbit when considering external disturbances, and the maximum revisit time on the earth observation area is calculated. By minimizing the performance index using a genetic algorithm, the optimum orbit of the satellite constellation is designed. Numerical results are provided to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
• /
• v.55 no.12
• /
• pp.1125-1135
• /
• 2022

Damages by heavy snow does not occur very often, but when it does, it causes damage to a wide area. To mitigate snow damage, it is necessary to know, in advance, the depth of snow that causes damage in each region. However, snow depths are measured at observatory locations, and it is difficult to understand the spatial distribution of snow depth that causes damage in a region. To understand the spatial distribution of snow depth, the point measurements are interpolated. However, estimating spatial distribution of snow depth is not easy when the number of measured snow depth is small and topographical characteristics such as altitude are not similar. To overcome this limit, satellite images such as Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) can be analyzed using Differential Interferometric SAR (DInSAR) method. DInSAR uses two different SAR images measured at two different times, and is generally used to track minor changes in topography. In this study, the spatial distribution of snow depth was estimated by DInSAR analysis using dual polarimetric IW mode C-band SAR data of Sentinel-1B satellite operated by the European Space Agency (ESA). In addition, snow depth was estimated using geostationary satellite Chollian-2 (GK-2A) to compare with the snow depth from DInSAR method. As a result, the accuracy of snow cover estimation in terms with grids was about 0.92% for DInSAR and about 0.71% for GK-2A, indicating high applicability of DInSAR method. Although there were cases of overestimation of the snow depth, sufficient information was provided for estimating the spatial distribution of the snow depth. And this will be helpful in understanding regional damage-causing snow depth.

• Journal of Satellite, Information and Communications
• /
• v.12 no.1
• /
• pp.6-12
• /
• 2017

Recently, the demand for SAR imaging is growing to monitor natural disasters or military sites to foresee topographic changes, where optical sensing is not easily available. High-resolution SAR images are useful in exploring topography and monitoring artificial land objects in all weather conditions. In this paper,high resolution SAR images acquired from KOMPSAT-5 are exploited for the applications of change detection and classification. In order to detect change areas, amplitude change detection (ACD) and coherence change detection (CCD) algorithms are employed and their performances are compared in practical applications. For enhanced performance, the potential of small scaled change detection is explored by combining multi-temporary SAR images. The k-means and SVM methods are applied for land classifications and their performances are compared by applying to the real spaceborne SAR images.

• Journal of Cadastre & Land InformatiX
• /
• v.47 no.2
• /
• pp.79-90
• /
• 2017

Urban environment represent one of the most dynamic regions on earth. As in other countries, forests, green areas, agricultural lands are rapidly changing into residential or industrial areas in South Korea. Monitoring such rapid changes in land use requires rapid data acquisition, and satellite imagery can be an effective method to this demand. In general, SAR(Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellites acquire images with an active system, so the brightness of the image is determined by the surface roughness. Therefore, the water areas appears dark due to low reflection intensity, In the residential area where the artificial structures are distributed, the brightness value is higher than other areas due to the strong reflection intensity. If we use these characteristics of SAR images, settlement areas can be extracted efficiently. In this study, extraction of settlement areas was performed using TerraSAR-X of German high-resolution X-band SAR satellite and KOMPSAT-5 of South Korea, and object-oriented image classification method using the image segmentation technique is applied for extraction. In addition, to improve the accuracy of image segmentation, the speckle divergence was first calculated to adjust the reflection intensity of settlement areas. In order to evaluate the accuracy of the two satellite images, settlement areas are classified by applying a pixel-based K-means image classification method. As a result, in the case of TerraSAR-X, the accuracy of the object-oriented image classification technique was 88.5%, that of the pixel-based image classification was 75.9%, and that of KOMPSAT-5 was 87.3% and 74.4%, respectively.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
• /
• 2008.10a
• /
• pp.240-242
• /
• 2008

In the present article, we analyze airborne Pi-SAR (Polarimetric-Interferometric SAR) X-band images of ocean waves around the Miyake Island at approximately 180 km south from Tokyo, Japan. Two images of a same scene were produced at approximately 40 min. interval from two directions at right angles. One image shows dominant range travelling waves, but the other image shows a different wave pattern. This difference can be caused by the different image modulations of RCS and velocity bunching. We have estimated the dominant wavelength from the image of range waves, and from the wave phase velocity computed from the dispersion relation (though no wave height data were available), the image intensity is computed by using the velocity bunching model. The comparison of the result with the second image at right angle strongly suggests the evidence of velocity bunching.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
• /
• v.45 no.1
• /
• pp.54-62
• /
• 2017

For the Earth observation satellite for ISR mission, a satellite constellation can be utilized to observe a specific area periodically and ultimately increase the effectiveness of the mission. The Walker-Delta method was applied to design constellation orbits with four satellites, which could detect abnormal activities in AoI(Area of Interest). To evaluate the effectiveness of the mission, a revisiting time was selected as a key requirement. This paper presents the mission analysis process for four SAR satellites constellation as well as the result of constellation configuration design to meet the requirements. Figure of Merits analysis was performed based on algorithm developed. Finally, it was confirmed that the constellation orbit with four different orbital planes is likely to be appropriate for ISR mission.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
• /
• v.35 no.4
• /
• pp.617-623
• /
• 2019

Numerous water disasters have recently occurred all over the world, including South Korea, due to global climate change in recent years. As water-related disasters occur extensively and their sites are difficult for people to access, it is necessary to monitor them using satellites. The Ministry of Environment and K-water plan to launch the next-generation medium satellite No. 5 (water resource/water disaster satellite) equipped with C-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) in 2025. C-band SAR has the advantage of being able to observe water resources twice a day at a high resolution both day and night, regardless of weather conditions. Currently, RADARSAT-2 and Sentinel-1 equipped with C-band SAR achieve the purpose of their launch and are used in various environmental fields such as forest structure detection and coastline change monitoring, as well as for unique purposes including the detection of flooding, drought and soil moisture change, utilizing the advantages of SAR. As such, this study aimed to analyze the characteristics of the next-generation medium satellite No. 5 and its application in environmental fields. Our findings showed that it can be used to improve the degree of precision of existing environmental spatial information such as the classification accuracy of land cover map in environmental field works. It also enables us to observe forests and water resources in North Korea that are difficult to access geographically. It is ultimately expected that this will enable the monitoring of the whole Korean Peninsula in various environmental fields, and help in relevant responses and policy supports.

• Aerospace Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.3 no.2
• /
• pp.34-41
• /
• 2004

In this paper, the SAR operational mode for achieving mission is designed. Each mode, which is the strip mode, scan mode, and fine mode, is basically considered. Based on the characteristics, which includes incidence angle, of the topography in Korean Peninsula, look angle for SAR satellite is determined. The limited region of operating the mission, which is considered to be able to receive and transmit the radar data, was defined to use determined operational mode. In the future, as considering full requirements and conditions for the SAR satellite, requirements and parameters will be discussed and studied.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
• /
• v.40 no.5
• /
• pp.502-517
• /
• 2019

Global warming and rapid climate change have long affected the characteristics of typhoons in the Northwest Pacific, which has induced increasing devastating disasters along the coastal regions of the Korean peninsula. Synthetic Aperature Radar (SAR), as one of the microwave sensors, makes it possible to produce high-resolution sea surface wind field around the typhoon under cloudy atmospheric conditions, which has been impossible to obtain the winds from satellite optical and infrared sensors. The Geophysical Model Functions (GMFs) for sea surface wind retrieval from SAR data requires the input of wind direction, which should be based on the accurate estimation of the center of the typhoon. This study estimated the typhoon centers using Sentinel-1A images to improve the problem of typhoon center detection method and to reflect it in retrieving the sea surface wind. The results were validated by comparing with the typhoon best track data provided by the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) and Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), and also by using infrared images of Himawari-8 satellite. The initial center position of the typhoon was determined by using VH polarization, thereby reducing the possibility of error. The detected center showed a difference of 23.76 km on average with the best track data of the four typhoons provided by the KMA and JMA. Compared to the typhoon center estimated by Himawari-8 satellite, the results showed an average spatial variation of 11.80 km except one typhoon located near land with a large difference of 58.73 km. This result suggests that high-resolution SAR images can be used to estimate the center and retrieve sea surface wind around typhoons.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
• /
• v.37 no.2
• /
• pp.71-79
• /
• 2019

Geolocation accuracy is one of the important factors in utilizing all weather available SAR satellite imagery. In this study, an error budget analysis was performed on key variables affecting on geolocation accuracy by generating KOMPSAT-5 simulation data. To perform the analysis, a Range-Doppler model was applied as a geometric model of the SAR imagery. The results show that the geolocation errors in satellite position and velocity are linearly related to the biases in the azimuth and range direction. With 0.03cm/s satellite velocity biases, the simulated errors were up to 0.054 pixels and 0.0047 pixels in the azimuth and range direction, and it implies that the geolocation accuracy is sensitive in the azimuth direction. Moreover, while the clock drift causes a geolocation error in the azimuth direction, a signal delay causes in the range direction. Monte-Carlo simulation analysis was performed to analyze the influence of multiple geometric error sources, and the simulated error was up to 3.02 pixels in the azimuth direction.