Special Interest Groups > Radar Remote Sensing

Special Interest Group 'Radar Remote Sensing'

Introduction

Nowadays a substantial part of remote sensing for Earth Observation (EO) is performed in the radar domain of the electromagnetic spectrum. Compared to passive optical sensors, radar instruments illuminate the scene actively with signal wavelength on the order of centimeters. These features give rise to the manifold advantages of radar including all-weather operation, ability to work in different modes implying complementing data features and characteristics, and data acquisition independent of time of day.

Radar sensors are utilized for diverse remote sensing applications such as altimetry (sea level measurement) and scatterometry (ocean wind speed and direction). The most prominent technique however is imaging radar according to the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) principle. In the early days SAR was mainly applied for mapping purposes based on the signal amplitude alone. In recent years the focus of research and operational use shifted to the exploitation of other features of the signal wave such as phase and polarization. For example, this offers the possibility to extract 3-D data by SAR Interferometry, subsidence monitoring based on differential SAR Interferometry, and to obtain improved classification and discrimination capabilities by SAR Polarimetry.

In this framework it seemed natural to set up a Special Interest Group on radar remote sensing, a most promising field of research and application. Many topics are considered, and many others will add up in the future as the most recent developments are going to unfold.

Topics

This special interest group shall focus on research and applications related to synthetic aperture radar. Topics of interest are:

• Synthetic Aperture Radar in its various aspects
• Object detection and recognition from SAR data
• SAR Interferometry
• SAR Polarimetry
• Ground based SAR
• Differential InSAR
• High-resolution satellite radar data
• High-resolution airborne radar data

Actions

The special interest group (SIG) will organize a session during the EARSeL symposium in Warsaw from 29 th of May - 2 nd of June 2006.

The SIG will have a joint workshop together with “3D Remote Sensing”, “Data Fusion”, “Developing Countries”, and “Urban Remote Sensing” from 5 th – 7 th March 2008 in Bochum , Germany.

Various topics about radar remote sensing on urban areas will be discussed also in the URBAN/URS 2007 conference, 11-13 April 2007, Paris, France.

Organization

Chairman : Prof. Dr. Uwe Soergel
Assistant Professor for Radar Remote Sensing, Institute for Photogrammetry and GeoInformation, University of Hannover, Nienburger Str. 1, 30167 Hannover, Germany.

Co-chairman : Prof. Dr. Fabio Dell’Acqua
Assistant Professor for Remote Sensing and Earth Observation, Department of Electronics, University of Pavia,
Via Ferrata, 1 – I-27100 Pavia, Italy.

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