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EUSAR 

Tutorials 

EUSAR 2010 will offer full-day tutorial courses including topical areas as polarimetry, interferometry, Pol-InSAR and bi-/multistatic SAR. The tutorial courses will be held on Monday, 07 June 2010 at the conference site and will include principles and basic theory, overview of applications and sensor systems.

The tutorials are addressed to all EUSAR participants who are interested in these topics, with minor and advanced technical knowledge on the particular field.

 

In order to register for one of these tutorials, please ckick here.  


Tutorial 1: Multi-Baseline SAR Interferometry & Tomography

09:00-11:00 Introduction into SAR Interferometry
Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Richard Bamler

German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Remote Sensing Technology Institute (IMF)
Director
Email: richard.bamler@dlr.de
Technische Universität München
Lehrstuhl für Methodik der Fernerkundung

 

Richard Bamler received his diploma degree in electrical engineering, his doctor of engineering degree, and his “habilitation” in the field of signal and systems theory in 1980, 1986, and 1988, respectively, from the Technische Universität München (Germany).
He worked at that university during 1981 and 1989 on optical signal processing, holography, wave propagation, and tomography. He joined the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, in 1989, where he is currently the Director of the Remote Sensing Technology Institute. Since then he and his team have been working on SAR signal processing algorithms (ERS, SIR-C/X-SAR, Radarsat, SRTM, ASAR, TerraSAR-X, TanDEM-X), SAR calibration and product validation, SAR interferometry, phase unwrapping, estimation theory and model based inversion methods for atmospheric sounding (GOME, SCIAMACHY, MIPAS, GOME-2) and oceanography.
In early 1994 Prof. Bamler was a visiting scientist at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in preparation of the SIC-C/X-SAR missions, and in 1996 he was guest professor at the University of Innsbruck. Since 2003 he holds a full professorship in remote sensing technology at the Technische Universität München.
His current research interests are in algorithms for optimum information extraction from remote sensing data with emphasis on SAR, SAR interferometry, persistent scatterer interferometry, SAR tomography, and GMTI for security related applications. He and his team have developed and are currently developing the operational processor systems for the German missions TerraSAR-X, TanDEM-X, and EnMAP.

11:00-11:15 Coffee Break


11:15-12:30 Differential SAR Interferometry

Dr. Alessandro Ferretti
CEO
Tele-Rilevamento Europa – T.R.E. Srl
Via Vittoria Colonna, 7
20149 – Milano – ITALY
Ph:   +39 02 4343 121
Fax:  +39 02 4343 1230
Email: alessandro.ferretti@treuropa.com                
Web: www.treuropa.com

Alessandro Ferretti graduated (cum laude) in electronic engineering in 1993 at the Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI) Technical University. He then received a Master’s degree in Information Technology from CEFRIEL in 1994 and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from POLIMI in 1997. Since 1994 he has been involved in R&D activities on satellite radar interferometry for digital elevation model reconstruction and for the monitoring of surface deformation phenomena. Alessandro Ferretti, together with Fabio Rocca and Claudio Prati, is the co-inventor of the so-called Permanent Scatterer Technique (PSInSAR™), patented by POLIMI in 1999. Since the incorporation in 2000, he is CEO of TRE (Tele-Rilevamento Europa), a POLIMI spin-off company specialized in InSAR applications. He has been involved in hundreds of projects related to differential SAR interferometry for a variety of applications. Since 2008, he is Chairman of the Board of TRE Canada, a subsidiary of TRE, based in Vancouver (BC), incorporated to better cover the North American market.


12:30-13:45 Lunch


13:45-14:30 Differential SAR Interferometry
Dr. Alessandro Ferretti

 

14:30-14:45 Coffee Break

14:45-16:45 SAR Tomography

Dr. habil. Andreas Reigber
German Aerospace Center
Microwaves and Radar Institute
Email: Andreas.Reigber@dlr.de

 

Dr. Reigber received the diploma degree in physics from the University of Constance, Germany, in 1997, the Ph.D. degree from the University of Stuttgart, Germany, in 2001, and the Habilitation from the Berlin University of Technology, Germany, in 2008. From 1996 to 2000, he has been with the Microwave and Radar Institute of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, working in the field of polarimetric SAR tomography. In 2001, he joined the Antenna, Radar and Telecom laboratories of the University of Rennes 1, Rennes, France, for a postdoc on radar polarimetry and polarimetric interferometry. From 2002 to 2007, he has been research associate at the Computer Vision and Remote Sensing laboratories of the Berlin University of Technology, Germany. Since 2008 he is back at the DLR Microwave and Radar Institute, where he is now head of the SAR technology department and directing the airborne SAR activities of the institute. In parallel, he is lecturer for remote sensing at the Berlin University of Technology. Dr. Reigber has received several Prize Paper Awards, among them the IEEE TGRS Best Paper Award in 2001 for a work on polarimetric SAR tomography. His current main research interests are the various aspects of multi-modal SAR, like SAR interferometry, SAR polarimetry, SAR tomography and time-frequency analyses, but also the application of computer vision and machine learning approaches in remote sensing. 

 

Short Tutorial description:

Introduction to SAR Interferometry: The lecture introduces the geometrical, statistical, and processing aspects of SAR interferometry (InSAR). While many flavors of InSAR are briefly treated, across-track InSAR for DEM generation is discussed in detail including processing schemes and error sources. The concept of coherence and interferogram quality is explained. Phase unwrapping algorithms are presented. Multibaseline approaches are shown to support phase unwrapping and 3D reconstruction via tomographic approaches and Persistent Scatterer Interferometry. Many examples from medium resolution (ERS/ENVISAT) and high resolution (TerraSAR-X) SAR systems illustrate the theoretical parts.

Differential SAR Interferometry: Differential Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (DInSAR) from Earth-orbiting spacecraft has lately revolutionized the field of crustal deformation research and space geodesy. In this seminar, after presenting the mathematical background of this technology, we show how many applications related to surface deformation monitoring with a huge potential impact on Civil Protection activities can benefit from radar space measurements. Advanced DInSAR algorithms developed in the last decade, such as the Permanent Scatterer Technique and SqueeSAR, have significantly increased the precision and the reliability of DInSAR measurements making it possible to use them on operational projects. Until recently, a limitation to the application of DInSAR was the relatively long revisiting time of C-band and L-band satellites. However, the new generation of X-band radar satellites can provide significant improvements and, in synergy with C-band sensors, will be a key-element for large-scale national monitoring programs.

SAR Tomography: SAR tomography is the extension of conventional two-dimensional SAR imaging principle to three dimensions, usually achieved by the formation of an additional synthetic aperture in elevation by a coherent cobination of several SAR images. This greatly extends the potential of SAR, particularly for the analysis of the inner structure of volumetric targets, like for example forested and urban areas. This tutorial introduces into the basic concepts of SAR tomography and the different possible imaging geometries. Several 3D focusing algorithms will be explained and reviewed, as well as their extension towards the inclusion of polarimetric information.

 

Tutorial 2: Future SAR Systems: Principles and Applications

09:00-11:00 Bistatic SAR Systems

Prof. Ing. Antonio Moccia
Department of Aerospace Engineering
Professor of Aerospace Remote Sensing Systems
Faculty of Engineering, University of Naples Federico II
Email: antonio.moccia@unina.it

Since 1983 he has been staff researcher and lecturer, and since 1990 full professor of courses in Aerospace Systems at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Naples Federico II.
He has been principal investigator in national and international research programs dealing with design, realization and performance of high resolution aerospace remote sensing systems, and with aerospace remote sensing data acquisition, calibration, processing and application.
Many of these activities were conducted in cooperation with international research institutions and industries, such as Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Goddard Space Research Center, Harvard-Smithsonian Observatory, Thales Alenia Space and several US and European Universities.
Antonio Moccia is author of over 160 scientific papers (since 1977) published in distinguished international journals or in conference proceedings or as book chapters, frequently referenced in international scientific and technical literature. He is referee of national and international technical journals, reviewer of research proposals concerning tenders issued by national and international authorities and member of national and international technical and scientific panels (such as NASA, ESA, European Union, Italian Ministry for Research, Italian Space Agency and Italian Aerospace Research Center).
Presently he is chairman of the Ph.D. course in Industrial Engineering and president of Aerospace Engineering study courses (Laurea and Laurea Magistrale Degrees), at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Naples Federico II.

 

11:00-11:15 Coffee Break

 

11:15-12:30 Multistatic and Multi-Aperture SAR Systems
G. Krieger (DLR)
Gerhard Krieger received the Dipl.-Ing. (M.S.) and Dr.-Ing. (Ph.D.) degrees (with honors) in electrical and communication engineering from the Technical University of Munich, Germany, in 1992 and 1999, respectively.
From 1992 to 1999, he was with the Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich, where he conducted multidisciplinary research on neuronal modeling and nonlinear information processing in biological and technical vision systems. In 1999, he joined the Microwaves and Radar Institute (HR) of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, where he developed signal and image processing algorithms for a novel forward looking radar system employing digital beamforming on receive. From 2001 to 2007 he led the New SAR Missions Group which pioneered the development of advanced bistatic and multistatic radar systems as exemplified by the forthcoming TanDEM-X mission as well as innovative multi-channel SAR techniques and algorithms for high-resolution wide-swath SAR imaging. Since 2008, he has been Head of the new Radar Concepts Department of the Microwaves and Radar Institute, DLR, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany.
Dr. Krieger received several national and international awards, including the IEEE Transactions Prize Paper Award of the Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society and the Otto Lilienthal Sabbatical of the German Aerospace Center, DLR. He is author of 30 peer reviewed journal papers, 4 invited book chapters, more than 100 conference papers, and 4 patents. His current research interests focus on the development of multi-channel radar techniques and algorithms for innovative MIMO SAR systems, the demonstration of novel interferometric and tomographic Earth observation applications, and the conceptual design of advanced bi- and multistatic radar missions.

 

12:30-13:45 Lunch

 

13:45-14:30 Multistatic and Multi-Aperture SAR Systems
G. Krieger (DLR)

 

 14:30-14:45 Coffee Break

14:45-16:45 Basics of GMTI and Applications with SAR
Prof. Pierfrancesco Lombardo

University of Rome “La Sapienza”
Full Professor for Radar Systems
Radar remote Sensing and Navigation Group
Email: lombardo@infocom.uniroma1.it

 

Dr. Pierfrancesco Lombardo graduated in Electronic Engineering with distinction at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" in July 1991. In November 1995, he received the Ph.D. In 1991-1992 Dr. Lombardo served as Officer Engineer at the Official Test Center of the Italian Air Force. In 1994 he was research associate at the University of Birmingham (UK), while working on high resolution clutter in the SAR team of the Defense Research Agency in Malvern (UK). Dr. Lombardo was involved in research on space-time adaptive processing for AEW and SAR at Syracuse University (NY-USA), where he was research associate in 1996. In June 1996 he joined as a Research Scientist the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, where he is presently Full Professor.

Dr. Lombardo is involved in, and coordinates, research projects funded by the European Union Framework Programs, Italian Space Agency, the Italian Ministry of Research and the national Industry. His research has been reported in over 170 publications in international technical journals and conferences. He served in the technical committee of many international conferences on radar systems and signal processing. He was Chairman of Technical Committee of the IEEE/ISPRS Joint Workshop on Remote Sensing and Data Fusion over Urban Areas URBAN’2001, Rome, Italy, URBAN’2003, Berlin, Germany, and URBAN’2005, Tempe, Arizona (US).  He was also co-Chairman of the IEEE Radar Conference 2008. He is co-recipient of the best paper award, entitled to Mr. B. Carlton, of IEEE Trans. on Aerospace and Electronic Systems for the year 2001 and of the best paper award for the IEEE Trans. on Geoscience and Remote Sensing for the year 2003.

Dr. Lombardo is a member of IEEE AES Radar System Panel, member of the Editorial board of the IET Proceedings on Radar Sonar and Navigation. He is associate Editor for Radar Systems for the IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems since June 2001. He is also one of the twelve members of the Scientific Committee of the SESAR (Single European Sky ATM Research) Joint Undertaking (European Commission & Eurocontrol).

 

Short Tutorial description:

Bistatic SAR Systems: Bistatic Synthetic Aperture Radar is one of the newest research and development areas in radar technology. Spaceborne, airborne and hybrid experiments have been proposed and, frequently, successfully carried out, giving evidence of potentialities in wide applicative areas, ranging from oceanography, topography, and other Earth sciences to surveillance. The tutorial will introduce to Bistatic SAR, in particular by comparing its peculiarities, operation and performance with respect to conventional SAR. Main key issues will be outlined and overall description at system level will be presented. A review of potential application will be offered, highlighting achieved and achievable quantitative results, with special emphasis on terrain elevation and moving target velocity measurements.

Multistatic and Multi-Aperture SAR Systems: This tutorial provides an overview of multistatic and multi-aperture SAR systems. Such systems employ spatially distributed antennas to simultaneously acquire backscattering information from multiple view angles. This information is well suited to improve the performance and to acquire new information products. The tutorial is divided into two parts. The first part is devoted to the capabilities and challenges of advanced bistatic and multistatic SAR systems. Various bi- and multistatic SAR configurations are introduced and their potential is assessed with regard to different remote sensing applications. Important steps in the mission design and optimization are explained by means of TanDEM-X which will be the first multistatic radar in space. Further, major challenges such as phase and time synchronisation, bistatic SAR processing, safe formation flying as well as relative position sensing are addressed. The second part is devoted to innovative multi-aperture and digital beamforming radar systems. Such systems employ multiple parallel channels on a single platform to overcome fundamental limitations of current SAR sensors. An important application is the development of novel high-resolution wide-swath SAR systems that will in the future significantly enhance the mapping and monitoring capabilities for advanced remote sensing applications. The focus of the tutorial will be on spaceborne radar systems, but some examples from airborne campaigns will also be provided for illustration.

Basics of GMTI and Applications with SAR: The presentation will offer a review of the basics of Ground Moving Target Indication (GMTI) radar from air- and space-borne platforms, there including the detection, motion estimation, focusing, and relocation of the mover on the surface. The specific requirements for GMTI with monostatic and bistatic SAR systems will be introduced, and the related signal processing techniques will be presented.
The potentialities of multi-channel vs. single-channel SAR will be compared, showing the significant performance achievable with the former and the limited - but yet valuable and interesting - results provided by the single channel SAR sensors.
Finally the exploitation of SAR constellations for GMTI will be considered, there including both MIMO configurations and passive SAR configurations, with their potentialities.
 

Tutorial 3: Polarimetric SAR and Polarimetric SAR Interferometry

 

09:00-11:00 SAR Polarimetry
Prof. Dr.-Hab Eric POTTIER

IETR  - UMR CNRS 6164
University of Rennes 1
Campus de Beaulieu, Bat 11D
263 av General Leclerc
F-35042 Rennes cedex
France

Phone / Fax : (+33) (0)2.23.23.57.63 / 69.63
e-mail : eric.pottier@univ-rennes1.fr

Eric Pottier (IEEE M’95, SM’06, SEE SM’07) received the MSc (87) and Ph.D. (90) in «signal processing and telecommunication» from the University of Rennes 1 and defended his Habilitation from the University of Nantes in 1998 on the topic «Contribution to Radar Polarimetry : From Theoretical Approach to Applications ».

Since 1999, he is full professor at the University of Rennes 1, France, where he is presently the Deputy Director of the Institute of Electronics and Telecommunications of Rennes (I.E.T.R – CNRS UMR 6164) – a staff of more than 330 Professors, Associate-Professors, Assistant-Professors, Researchers and PhD Students.
He is also the Head of the SAPHIR team (SAr Polarimetry Holography Interferometry Radargrammetry) of the Image Processing and Remote Sensing Group.
He was nominated as Associate Professor of Capital Normal University of Beijing (October 2005), as Invited Professor at I.N.R.S – ETE of Québec (2006 to 2012) and as Guest Professor of the State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, University of Wuhan, Wuhan – PR China (2008).

Since 1989, he has supervised more than 60 research students to graduation (MSc and Ph.D) in Radar Polarimetry covering areas from theory to remote sensing applications.
He has published a book co-authored with Dr. J.S. Lee entitled “Polarimetric Radar Imaging: From basics to applications”, 9 publications in book chapters, more than 50 papers in refereed journals and more than 310 papers during International Conferences, Symposiums and Workshops.

He received the Award for a Very Significant Contribution in the Field of Synthetic Aperture Radar during EUSAR-2000 for his research activities, co-authored with J.S. Lee (US Navy/NRL), in the topic of PolSAR unsupervised segmentation.
He received the 2007 IEEE GRS-S Letters Prize Paper Award co-authored with S. Guillaso, L. Ferro-Famil and A. Reigber.
He is a recipient of the 2007 IEEE GRS-S Education Award “In recognition of his significant educational contributions to Geoscience and Remote Sensing”.

11:00-11:15 Coffee Break

 

11:15-12:30 Introduction into Pol-InSAR
Dr. Shane R. Cloude, Director
,
AEL Consultants
Edinburgh, Scotland
Web-page: http://web.mac.com/aelc
Email: aelc@mac.com

Fellow, Edinburgh Earth Observatory,
School of Geosciences
University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Web-page: http://www.eeo.ed.ac.uk/
e-mail : scloude@ieee.org

Shane Cloude obtained his BSc from the University of Dundee, Scotland  (1981) and PhD University of Birmingham, England  (1987), both in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. He then held teaching and research positions at the Universities of Dundee in Scotland, York in England and Nantes in France, working on the early development of radar polarimetry. In 1996 he was awarded a Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany, where he spent a year working as a guest scientist at the German Space Centre, DLR, near Munich. Since then he has worked closely with scientists at DLR, helping to develop the new topic of polarimetric SAR interferometry. Between 1997-2004 he was senior scientist with Applied Electromagnetics, a defence research company based in Scotland. In 2004 he was appointed to the DSTO chair in Microwave Radar at the University of Adelaide in Australia. In 2006 he returned to Scotland to lead AEL Consultants, offering training courses and applied research for customers in radar remote sensing.  He is also currently Fellow in Radar Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, working on research in advanced new radar techniques for forestry applications. He has over 200 publications in the area (including a recent textbook, “Polarisation: Applications in Remote Sensing” with Oxford University Press) and in 2001 was appointed a Fellow of the IEEE for his contributions to the development of polarization techniques in radar remote sensing.

12:30-13:45 Lunch

 

13:45-14:30 Introduction into Pol-InSAR
S. Cloude (AEL Consultants)

 

14:30-14:45 Coffee Break

14:45-16:45 Pol-InSAR Applications and Concepts
K. Papathanassiou (DLR)

Konstantinos Panagiotis Papathanassiou (IEEE M’ 02, SM’ 03 ) received the Dipl. Ing degree (Honors) in 1994 and the Dr. degree (Honors) in 1999 from the Technical University of Graz, Austria. From 1992 to 1994 he was with the Institute for Digital Image Processing (DIBAG) of Joanneum Research, in Graz, Austria. Between 1995 and 1999 he worked at the Microwaves and Radar Institute (HR) of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. From 1999 to 2000 he was an EU post-doctoral fellow with Applied Electromagnetics (AEL) in St. Andrews, Scotland. Since October 2000 he is again with the Microwaves and Radar Institute (HR) of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Actually he is a senior scientist leading the Information Retrieval research group at DLR-HR.

His main research interests are in polarimetric and interferometric processing and calibration techniques, polarimetric SAR interferometry, and the quantitative parameter estimation from SAR data, as well as in SAR mission design and SAR mission performance analysis. He has more than 100 publications in international journals, conferences and workshops. He was awarded with the IEEE GRSS IGARSS Symposium Prize Paper Award in 1998, the Best Paper Award of the European SAR Conference (EUSAR) in 2002 and the DLR science award in 2002.


 

Short Tutorial description:

SAR Polarimetry: PolSAR remote sensing offers an efficient and reliable means of collecting information required to extract geophysical and biophysical parameters from Earth’s surface. This remote sensing technique has found many successful applications in crop monitoring and damage assessment, in forestry clear cut mapping, deforestation and burn mapping, in land surface structure (geology) land cover (biomass) and land use, in hydrology (soil moisture, flood delineation), in sea ice monitoring, in oceans and coastal monitoring (oil spill detection) etc. SAR Polarimetry represents today a very active area of research in Radar Remote Sensing, and it becomes important to train and prepare the future generation of researchers to this very important topic. The aim of this tutorial is to provide a substantial and balanced introduction to the basic theory, scattering concepts, systems and advanced concepts, and applications typical to radar polarimetric remote sensing. This lecture will be illustrated by ALOS-PALSAR, TerraSAR-X and RADARSAT-2 polarimetric SAR images.

Introduction to POLInSAR: In this tutorial we show how polarization diversity can be combined with radar polarimetry to provide important new tools for interpreting radar images where we observe a mixture of surface and volume scattering. We first treat the signal processing aspects such as coherence optimization, the coherence region and baseline optimization before considering the use of coherent 3-D scattering models for geophysical parameter estimation, concentrating on the popular RVOG or random-volume-over-ground model, pointing out its strengths and weaknesses. We then give an up-dated survey of techniques for estimation of vegetation height and underlying surface topography before showing how these parameters can then be used as a basis for 3-D imaging through polarization coherence tomography or PCT. We finish by showing examples from L, P and X bands and set the scene for the follow on tutorial, which will consider POLInSAR applications and system aspects in more detail.

Pol-InSAR Applications and Concepts: Building on the basic principles and concepts introduced in the first two tutorials, this third part concentrates on the applications and performance of Pol-InSAR techniques. Experimental results obtained in the frame of dedicated Pol-InSAR airborne campaigns are reviewed with emphasis on performance aspects arising from different temporal and geometrical acquisition implementations. The role and choice of spatial and temporal baselines, and system frequency with respect to scattering and terrain characteristics is investigated. From this the key system and geometry parameters affecting the performance of Pol-InSAR configurations are established and discussed. Finally, the role and implementation of Pol-InSAR techniques in the frame of actual and future space-borne SAR missions is reviewed, the potential and limitations arising are discussed. 

 

For questions concerning the EUSAR2010 tutorials, please contact:

Irena Hajnsek, DLR
Phone: +49 (0) 8153 / 28-2363
E-Mail: irena.hajnsek@dlr.de

 

 
 
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