• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.26-67
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• 2020

Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR) is able to photograph the earth's surface regardless of weather conditions, day and night. Because of its possibility to search for hydrological factors such as soil moisture and groundwater, and its importance is gradually increasing in the field of water resources. SAR began to be mounted on satellites in the 1970s, and about 15 or more satellites were launched as of 2020, which around 10 satellites will be launched within the next 5 years. Recently, various types of SAR technologies such as enhancement of observation width and resolution, multiple polarization and multiple frequencies, and diversification of observation angles were being developed and utilized. In this paper, a brief history of the SAR system, as well as studies for estimating soil moisture and hydrological components were investigated. Up to now hydrological components that can be estimated using SAR satellites include soil moisture, subsurface groundwater discharge, precipitation, snow cover area, leaf area index(LAI), and normalized difference vegetation index(NDVI) and among them, soil moisture is being studied in 17 countries in South Korea, North America, Europe, and India by using the physical model, the IEM(Integral Equation Model) and the artificial intelligence-based ANN(Artificial Neural Network). RADARSAT-1, ENVISAT, ASAR, and ERS-1/2 were the most widely used satellite, but the operation has ended, and utilization of RADARSAT-2, Sentinel-1, and SMAP, which are currently in operation, is gradually increasing. Since Korea is developing a medium-sized satellite for water resources and water disasters equipped with C-band SAR with the goal of launching in 2025, various hydrological components estimation researches using SAR are expected to be active.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 2013

To classify the landfast ice in the north of the Greenland, observation data, multifrequency Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images and texture images were used. The total four types of sea ice are first year ice, highly deformed ice, ridge and moderately deformed ice. The texture images that were processed by K-means algorithm showed higher accuracy than the ones that were processed by SAR images; however, overall accuracy of maximum likelihood algorithm using texture images did not show the highest accuracy all the time. It turned out that when using K-means algorithm, the accuracy of the multi SAR images were higher than the single SAR image. When using the maximum likelihood algorithm, the results of single and multi SAR images are differ from each other, therefore, maximum likelihood algorithm method should be used properly.

• 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.

• Journal of Positioning, Navigation, and Timing
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.175-181
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• 2019

This paper suggests a velocity integration algorithm for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) motion measurement to reduce discontinuity of range error. When using position data from Embedded GPS/INS (EGI) to form SAR image, the discontinuity of the data degrades SAR image quality. In this paper, to reduce the discontinuity of EGI position data, EGI velocity integration is suggested which obtains navigation solution by integrating velocity data from EGI. Simulation shows that the method improves SAR image quality by reducing the discontinuity of range error. INS is a similar algorithm to EGI velocity integration in the way that it also obtains navigation solution by integrating velocity measured by IMU. Comparing INS and EGI velocity integration according to grades of IMU and GPS, EGI velocity integration is more suitable for the real system. Through this, EGI velocity integration is suggested, which improves SAR image quality more than existing algorithms.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.689-692
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• 2004

Hydrographic data obtained from several ship experiments have shown that internal waves are frequently observed in the East (Japan) Sea, mostly in the continental slopes located along the western side of the East Sea. It is well known that oceanic internal waves can be detected well in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. Interactions between surface capillary-gravity waves and horizontally varying surface currents induced by internal waves produce variations in sea surface roughness which can be detected by SAR. C-band SAR images from ERS, ENVISAT ASAR and RADARSAT have been used to study the characteristics of internal waves in the East Sea. The observed properties of internal waves from many SAR images were compared and verified from in-situ measurements and theories.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.57-59
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• 2004

This paper reports the observation of the interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) phase anomaly on a newly reclaimed mudflat, Hwaong, in west coast of Korea, detected by a series of Radarsat-l SAR data obtained mostly during 2003. The observed phase anomaly could be from subsidence of mud land caused by volumetric contraction of mud in dry season. This process must have been initiated from March 2002 when tidal water supply to this region was permanently blocked by the newly constructed embankment. The maximum subsidence rate measured from InSAR signal is about 3 cm per month. The local heterogeneity of the subsidence rate over the reclaimed mudflat may indicate various mud composition, surface-subsurface hydrological processes, or subsurface information of the mud and basement rock structure. In-situ measurement must follow to support this observation from space.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.441-444
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• 2008

This paper describes the development of a circularly polarized microstrip antenna, as a part of the Circularly Polarized Synthetic Aperture Radar (CP-SAR) sensor which is currently under developed at the Microwave Remote Sensing Laboratory (MRSL) in Chiba University. CP-SAR is a new type of sensor developed for the purpose of remote sensing. With this sensor, lower-noise data/image will be obtained due to the absence of depolarization problems from propagation encounter in linearly polarized synthetic aperture radar. As well the data/images obtained will be investigated as the Axial Ratio Image (ARI), which is a new data that hopefully will reveal unique various backscattering characteristics. The sensor will be mounted on an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) which will be aimed for fundamental research and applications. The microstrip antenna works in the frequency of 1.27 GHz (L-Band). The microstrip antenna utilized the proximity-coupled method of feeding. Initially, the optimization process of the single patch antenna design involving modifying the microstrip line feed to yield a high gain (above 5 dBi) and low return loss (below -10 dB). A minimum of 10 MHz bandwidth is targeted at below 3 dB of Axial Ratio for the circularly polarized antenna. A planar array from the single patch is formed next. Consideration for the array design is the beam radiation pattern in the azimuth and elevation plane which is specified based on the electrical and mechanical constraints of the UAV CP-SAR system. This research will contribute in the field of radar for remote sensing technology. The potential application is for landcover, disaster monitoring, snow cover, and oceanography mapping.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.3
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• pp.221-229
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• 2013

In this paper, the image formation by the motion compensation technique for Synthetic Aperture Radar system(SAR) were realized through the computer simulation. The motion compensation technique performed image data with the range compression, the compensation procedure, the azimuth compensation and the noise elimination procedure. The range compression procedure transform the SAR raw data into the frequency domain and correlate with the range reference function and then inversely transform into the time domain. The compensation procedure contain the aircraft fluctuations compensation and the radar image degrading effect elimination procedure which was caused by image formation algorithm itself. The aircraft fluctuations compensation procedure perform the first stage which correct the phase angle and the second stage which calculate the Doppler frequency and determine the coordinate of the received signal. The radar image degrading effect elimination procedure also perform range migration compensation and the image defocussing effect compensation. The azimuth compression procedure transform the compensation data to the frequency domain and correlate with the azimuth reference function. The azimuth correlated data are inversely transformed to the time domain which is called SAR image data. When the above procedure were completed, the image data contains the received signals mixed with noise. The threshold technique was applied to elimination the noise from the mixed image data.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.667-676
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• 2009

The payload can be classified as a passive and active type. Generally radar satellite to acquire specific information through various radar images will use the SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) as active type payload. the principal of SAR satellite is to receive the signal returned from certain objects and/or surfaces in order to construct an radar image. The data acquired from the satellite in its real orbit shall be needed to perform successful CAL/VAL (Calibration & Validation) because the SAR satellite have to receive the returned signal for SAR image construction. In order to do the above, the returned signal shall be related to ground targets. Especially ground target is the corner reflector (CR) for CAL/VAL. Generally the reflector has various types and shapes. Their selection can be dependent on characteristics and mission objectives of SAR satellite. In this paper, reflector focused on the optimal case and effective case has been studied and then the trihedral corner reflector under this study has been designed and its performance also analyzed.

• Aerospace Engineering and Technology
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.187-196
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• 2009

Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR) satellite system for broad-area imaging has RF systems including SAR radiating a high power, data link system transmitting the acquired image data from the SAR, TC&R(Telemetry, Command, and Ranging) to communicate with a ground segment to control a satellite. Each system transmits RF signal having various frequencies and radiates a high power, RS(Radiated Susceptibility) specification should be verified at an electronic unit mounted in satellite. RF interference can be happened because of non-linearity of a RF system. Therefore, we manufactured a structure model installed antennas which have a similar pattern with a real antenna, the effect by RF interference is analyzed and verified.