• Journal of Satellite, Information and Communications
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.74-79
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• 2014

Conventional ScanSAR mode has been adopted in Envisat or Radarsat and played an important role to acquire wide swath SAR images for environmental surveillance. However, it suffers from the undesirable scalloping effect caused by non-homogeneity of antenna pattern while the image resolution is sacrificed. In recent years, TOPS mode has been suggested and put into use to overcome the disadvantages of the conventional scanning mode. Although TOPS mode is able to produce wide-swath SAR image in a short time interval, it demands highly complicated system design knowledge. In this paper, we present the operation principle of TOPS mode and a full SAR simulation is performed to generate TOPS SAR raw data. Azimuth antenna pattern is modified during TOPS mode operation and it is shown that the undesired scalloping effect is suppressed in the generated SAR image.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2008.03a
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• pp.176-179
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• 2008

In the present article, wave imaging mechanisms were investigated using airborne Pi-SAR (Polarimetric-Interferometric SAR) X-band VV 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 20 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. In this study, 18 subimages are extracted, and the directional wave spectra are compared to each other of the two different areas.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.431-444
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• 2014

As applications of spaceborne SAR imagery are extended, there are increased demands for accurate registrations for better understanding and fusion of radar images. It becomes common to adopt multi-resolution SAR images to apply for wide area reconnaissance. Geometric correction of the SAR images can be performed by using satellite orbit and attitude information. However, the inherent errors of the SAR sensor's attitude and ground geographical data tend to cause geometric errors in the produced SAR image. These errors should be corrected when the SAR images are applied for multi-temporal analysis, change detection applications and image fusion with other sensor images. The undesirable ground registration errors can be corrected with respect to the true ground control points in order to produce complete SAR products. Speeded Up Robust Feature (SURF) technique is an efficient algorithm to extract ground control points from images but is considered to be inappropriate to apply to SAR images due to high speckle noises. In this paper, an attempt is made to apply SURF algorithm to SAR images for image registration and fusion. Matched points are extracted with respect to the varying parameters of Hessian and SURF matching thresholds, and the performance is analyzed by measuring the imaging matching accuracies. A number of performance measures concerning image registration are suggested to validate the use of SURF for spaceborne SAR images. Various simulations methodologies are suggested the validate the use of SURF for the geometric correction and image registrations and it is shown that a good choice of input parameters to the SURF algorithm should be made to apply for the spaceborne SAR images of moderate resolutions.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.183-196
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• 1998

The Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR) image and the Digital Elevation Model(DEM) of an target area are put into use to generate three dimensional image map. An method of image map generation is explained. The orbit and attitude determination of satellite makes it possible to model signal acquisition configuration precisely, which is a key to mapping image coordinates to geographic coordinates of concerned area. An application is made to RADARSAT in the purpose of testing its validity. To determine the orbit, zero Doppler range is used. And to determine the attitude, Doppler centroid frequency, which is the frequency observed when target is put in the center of antenna's view, is used. Conventional geocoding has been performed on the basis of direct method(mapping image coordinates to geographic coordinates), but in this reserch the inverse method(mapping from geographic coordinates to image coordinates) is taken. This paper shows that precise signal acquisition modeling based on the orbit and attitude determination of satellite as a platform leads to a satellite-centered accurate geocoding process. It also shows how to model relative motion between space-borne radar and target. And the relative motion is described in ECIC(earth-centered-initial coordinates) using Doppler equation and signal acquisition geometry.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.6_3
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• pp.2035-2046
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• 2021

Glacier movement speed is the most basic measurement for glacial dynamics research and is a very important indicator in predicting sea level rise due to climate change. In this study, the two-dimensional velocity measurements of Campbell Glacier located in Terra Nova Bay in East Antarctica were observed through the SAR offset tracking technique. For this purpose, domestic KOMPSAT-5 SAR satellite images taken on July 9, 2021 and August 6, 2021 were acquired. The Multi-kernel SAR offset tracking proposed through previous studies is a technique to obtain the optimal result that satisfies both resolution and precision. However, since offset tracking is repeatedly performed according to the size of the kernel, intensive computational power and time are required. Therefore, in this study, we strategically proposed a coarse-to-fine offset tracking approach. Through coarse-to-fine SAR offset tracking, it is possible to obtain a result with improved observation precision (especially, about 4 times in azimuth direction) while maintaining resolution compared to general offset tracking results. Using this proposed technique, a two-dimensional velocity measurements of Campbell Glacier were generated. As a result of analyzing the two-dimensional movement velocity image, it was observed that the grounding line of Campbell Glacier exists at approximately latitude -74.56N. The flow velocity of Campbell Glacier Tongue analyzed in this study (185-237 m/yr) increased compared to that of 1988-1989 (140-240 m/yr). And compared to the flow velocity (181-268 m/yr) in 2010-2012, the movement speed near the ground line was similar, but it was confirmed that the movement speed at the end of the Campbell Glacier Tongue decreased. However, there is a possibility that this is an error that occurs because the study result of this study is an annual rate of glacier movement that occurred for 28 days. For accurate comparison, it will be necessary to expand the data in time series and accurately calculate the annual rate. Through this study, the two-dimensional velocity measurements of the glacier were observed for the first time using the KOMPSAT-5 satellite image, a domestic X-band SAR satellite. It was confirmed that the coarse-to-fine SAR offset tracking approach of the KOMPSAT-5 SAR image is very useful for observing the two-dimensional velocity of glacier movements.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.55 no.11
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• pp.913-922
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• 2022

The purpose of this research is to propose the measurement of improving DEM by using the water surface range of SAR image analysis for river corridors and to suggest the construction of satellite-based 3D river spatial information of inaccessible regions such as North Korea. For this research, it has been progressed from the accessible area, watershed of Namgang river, the branch of Nakdonggang river. The satellite image was collected from SAR satellite image data for a year in 2021 which was provided by ESA from Sentinel-1A/B data and extracted from the seasonal water surface area. Ground gauge water level was collected from hourly intervals data by WAMIS. The DEM was improved by analysis of the river altitude of water surface area change by the combination of the ground water level of minimum to maximum water surface area data extracted from SAR image analysis. After the improvement of DEM, the altitude of the river varied that it is defined to comprise more natural form of river DEM than the existing DEM. The correction validation of improvement DEM was necessary in field survey elevation data; however, the correction validation was not progressed due to the absence of the data. Although, the purpose of this research is to provide the improvement of DEM by using the analyzed water surface by existing DEM data and SAR image analysis. After the progression of additional correction validation research, we would plan to examine the application in other places and to progress the additional methodological research to apply in inaccessible and unmeasured area including the North Korea.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.581-591
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• 2010

In this paper, we proposed a new wavelet-based image fusion algorithm, which has advantages in both frequency and spatial domains for signal analysis. The developed algorithm compares the ratio of SAR image signal to optical image signal and assigns the SAR image signal to the fused image if the ratio is larger than a predefined threshold value. If the ratio is smaller than the threshold value, the fused image signal is determined by a weighted sum of optical and SAR image signal. The fusion rules consider the ratio of SAR image signal to optical image signal, image gradient and local variance of each image signal. We evaluated the proposed algorithm using Ikonos and TerraSAR-X satellite images. The proposed method showed better performance than the conventional methods which take only relatively strong SAR image signals in the fused image, in terms of entropy, image clarity, spatial frequency and speckle index.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.25 no.6_1
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• pp.517-528
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• 2007

Extraction of the coastal boundary is important because the boundary serves as a reference in the demarcation of maritime zones such as territorial sea, contiguous zone, and exclusive economic zone. Accurate nautical charts also depend on well established, accurate, consistent, and current coastline delineation. However, to identify the precise location of the coastal boundary is a difficult task due to tidal and wave motions. This paper presents an efficient way to extract coastlines by applying digital image processing techniques to Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery. Over the past few years, satellite-based SAR and high resolution airborne SAR images have become available, and SAR has been evaluated as a new mapping technology. Using remotely sensed data gives benefits in several aspects, especially SAR is largely unaffected by weather constraints, is operational at night time over a large area, and provides high contrast between water and land areas. Various image processing techniques including region growing, texture-based image segmentation, local entropy method, and refinement with image pyramid were implemented to extract the coastline in this study. Finally, the results were compared with existing coastline data derived from aerial photographs.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.24 no.12
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• pp.1128-1139
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• 2013

KOMPSAT-5(KOrea Multi-Purpose SATellite-5) has a benefit of continuously conducting its mission in all weather and even night by loading SAR(Synthetic Aperture Radar) payload, which is different from optical sensor of KOMPSAT-2 satellite. During IOT(In-Orbit Test) periods, SAR image calibration should be conducted through ground target of which location and RCS is pre-determined. Differently from the conventional corner reflector, active transponder has a capability to change its internal transfer gain and delay, which allows active transponder to be shown in a pixel of SAR image with very high radiance and virtual location. In this paper, the development of active transponder is presented from design to I&T(Integration and Test).

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.53 no.6
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• pp.7-16
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• 2011

This study discussed the applicability of satellite SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) imagery with regard to reservoir monitoring, and tried the extraction of reservoir storage from multi-temporal C-band RADARSAT-1 SAR backscattering images of Yedang and Goongpyeong agricultural reservoirs, acquired from May to October 2005. SAR technology has been advanced as a complementary and alternative approach to optical remote sensing and in-situ measurement. Water bodies in SAR imagery represent low brightness induced by low backscattering, and reservoir storage can be derived from the backscatter contrast with the level-area-volume relationship of each reservoir. The threshold segmentation over the routine preprocessing of SAR images such as speckle reduction and low-pass filtering concluded a significant correlation between the SAR-derived reservoir storage and the observation record in spite of the considerable disagreement. The result showed up critical limitations for adopting SAR data to reservoir monitoring as follows: the inappropriate specifications of SAR data, the unreliable rating curve of reservoir, the lack of climatic information such as wind and precipitation, the interruption of inside and neighboring land cover, and so on. Furthermore, better accuracy of SAR-based reservoir monitoring could be expected through different alternatives such as multi-sensor image fusion, water level measurement with altimeters or interferometry, etc.