Program and Speakers

Born on 2 September 1953 in Heidenheim, Germany. Studied Physics at University in München and Heidelberg, where he received his Ph.D. at the Institute for Environmental Physics in 1985. He performed post-doc research at Princeton University before joining the German astronaut corps in late 1987.

In 1996 Thiele moved to Houston, Texas, where he was trained as mission specialist by NASA. In February 2000 he participated in the STS-99 Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, which aimed at generating a 3D digital topographical map of Earth’s landmass.

In 2001 Thiele returned to the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, where he became head of the astronaut division in 2005. In 2009 Thiele was responsible for the last ESA astronaut selection. Since 2010 Thiele worked as resident fellow at the European Space Policy Institute in Vienna focusing in his research on Space Exploration and on European Autonomy in Space. In 2013 he became Head of the Strategic Planning and Outreach Office in the Directorate of Human Spaceflight and Operations at ESA.

Since 2016 Thiele is self-employed and has a lecturer assignment at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Hochschule (RWTH) in Aachen. Gerhard Thiele is married and has four children.

Professor Dr. Martin Fiebich studied physics at the Universität of Münster from 1982 to 1988. As a graduate physicist, he then worked at the Institute for Clinical Radiology at Münster University Hospital and was employed there as a medical physicist from 1988 to 2000. During this time, he completed supplementary studies in medicine and completed his doctorate in medicine in 1995. From 1996 to 1998, he worked in the Department of Radiology at the University of Chicago in the Kurt Rossmann Laboratories on research in computer-assisted diagnosis. In 2000, he received an appointment at the Technical University of Central Hesse in the field of imaging systems in medicine.

He has been a member of Working Committee AA6 "Imaging Techniques" of the German Stadardization Group in Radiology (NAR) since 2005 and is chairman of this committee since 2010.

In 2011, he was appointed to working committees of the German Commission on Radiological Protection, e.g., working committee A2 "Medicine" and A4 "Radiation Protection Technology" as well as the working group "Measurement Uncertainties" and he was head of the working group "Quality Assurance in Medicine" from 2017 to 2018.

From 2014 to 2020, he was chairman of the "Biomedical Imaging" division of the German Society for Medical Physics (DGMP) and is currently vice president of the DGMP since 2021.

Professor Fiebich's research focuses on dose optimization for patients and staff, the development of new methods in quality assurance, and dosimetry in X-ray diagnostics especially in computed tomography.

Mr. Kroupnik is the Executive Director of Space Exploitation at the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

Mr. Kroupnik holds a Master of Engineering/Aerospace degree from Concordia University (Montreal), and the PMP certification by the Project Management Institute.

He has more than 30 years of engineering, functional, program, and executive management experience in the aerospace domain. Mr. Kroupnik led R&D activities, development, and launch of small- and microsatellites in Earth Observation, Space Situational Awareness, and satellite communications domains, such as CASSIOPE, NEOSSat, and M3MSat, and contributed to major satellite programs like Anik – F2, Radarsat –1, and Radarsat-2. In close collaboration with other government departments, and industrial team, Mr. Kroupnik has been leading development, deployment, and operations of the Radarsat Constellation Mission (RCM) – the flagship project of the Canadian Space Program.

 Mr. Kroupnik is internationally recognized expert in satellite matters and has been invited to contribute to the activities of international bodies like Coordinating Committee on Meteorological Satellites (CGMS), Group on Earth Observation (GEO), and Expert Team on Satellite Matters (ET-SAT) of the World Meteorological Organization. He represents CSA on the Board of the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters.

09:00–10:30

SAR Interferometry: an Introduction

Alessandro Ferretti (TRE ALTAMIRA, I) 

Content: Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR), also referred to as SAR Interferometry, is becoming one of the most commonly used techniques based on satellite radar sensors. By comparing radar images acquired at different times, InSAR can retrieve surface deformation data, with millimetre accuracy, over a set of measurement points on ground, automatically detected by means of signal processing algorithms. Its unique technical features and the possibility to retrieve historical deformation data, due to the availability of historical archives of satellite radar images, make InSAR a powerful tool for a variety of applications, in particular over urban areas, where the number of radar targets suitable for InSAR surveys is extremely high.
After introducing the basic ideas behind InSAR, this tutorial will discuss the main error sources (i.e. phase decorrelation phenomena, atmospheric effects, phase ambiguity) and the rationale behind multi-interferogram approaches. The peculiarity of different data sources available today and the trends we see in the space segment will also be briefly discussed.
The tutorial will show a gallery of examples ranging from wide area mapping (i.e. InSAR analysis over entire nations), down to single building analysis. Results should create evidence that most of the challenges related to an operational use of InSAR data have now been overcome, pushing InSAR to become a standard tool within the geotechnical and the civil engineering community. 

Biography: Alessandro Ferretti graduated in electronic engineering at the Politecnico di Milano, he received his MSc. In information technology in 1993 (CEFRIEL) and his PhD in electrical engineering in 1997 (POLIMI). Together with Fabio Rocca and Claudio Prati, developed the “Permanent Scatterer Technique” (PSInSAR), a technology patented in 1999 providing millimetre accuracy surface deformation measurements from satellite radar data. He is also co-inventor of the algorithm SqueeSAR™ (2009), a second-generation PSInSAR analysis. In March 2000 he cofounded, the company “Tele-Rilevamento Europa”, today TRE ALTAMIRA, the largest InSAR company worldwide. Since 2008 he has acted as Chairman of the Board of TRE Canada. In May 2016 TRE has been merged with Altamira Information and today Alessandro Ferretti is leading the TRE ALTAMIRA group, part of the CLS group.

11:00–12:30
SAR Tomography and Multi-Dimensional Imaging
Gianfranco Fornaro / Simona Verde (IREA-CNR, I) 

Content: Due to the capability to provide a direct physical measurement, interferometry is the technique that has most pushed the applications of SAR to a wide range of scientific areas and has provided important societal returns, mainly in risk monitoring and security. Repeat pass differential interferometry and Persistent Scatterers Interferometry (PSI) allows accurate localization of ground targets and monitoring of possible displacements to mm/yr order accuracy: this technology has been a real breakthrough for the application of SAR in the risk monitoring. The result of this successful story is the current and future availability of an increasing number of spaceborne SAR systems with interferometric capabilities made available by several international Space Agencies.
Multipass/multiview SAR data are today accessible for most of the Earth by means of acquisitions carried out over repeated orbits, and even with pairs of simultaneous acquisitions (Tandem-X). Such data have pushed the development of advanced processing techniques that improves the classical technology in terms of accuracy and objectiveness of the measurements.
SAR Interferometry founds on the use of the phase information to estimate the parameter of interest: SAR Tomography is a technique that turns the data processing into an imaging methodology able to operate a radar scanning in order to provide fully 3D (azimuth, range and elevation) focused images. It allows, thus, investigating the vertical scattering for application to forest and reconstruction and monitoring of complex scenarios. Multidimensional, 3D/4D (space-velocity), imaging has built the bridge between PSI and Tomography. It extents the 3D imaging to the velocity domain to enable also the monitor of temporal deformation of ground scatterers.

The tutorial concentrates on SAR Tomography and multidimensional imaging. Such topics will be described as the natural evolution of classical interferometry. The key aspects and inversion methods in SAR Tomography and multidimensional imaging for profiling the scattering distribution along the elevation direction and for monitoring possible deformation will be addressed.
The radar scanning allows the separation of different scattering mechanisms interfering in the same pixel thus mitigating the layover problem, which is particularly relevant in complex scenarios with a dense presence of vertical structures, such as urban areas. Results on real data acquired by very high-resolution sensors will be, therefore, discussed, with the aim to show the advanced capabilities of spaceborne radar scanning in reconstructing and monitoring single buildings. Finally, multilook and multiresolution tomographic based approaches will be discussed to trade off the spatial resolution and coverage of the monitored areas. 

Biography: Gianfranco Fornaro received the M.S. degree (summa cum laude) in electronic engineering in 1992 and the Ph.D. in 1997. He has been (since 1993) with IREA-CNR where, starting from 2010, he holds the position of Research Director, working in the area of remote sensing. His main research interests regard signal processing with applications to airborne and spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data processing, including motion compensation, SAR interferometry, differential SAR Interferometry and SAR Tomography. He has been Adjunct Professor in the area of telecommunications in several Universities, currently at the University of Napoli “Parthenope”. In 2013 he achieved the Full Professor habilitation in the Telecommunication area.  Dr. Fornaro has been visiting scientist at Politecnico of Milan and at DLR in Oberpfaffenhofen (Germany) also during the SIR-C/X-SAR mission. He has given invited Lectures in several International Institutions and in NATO Lecture Series (SET 191 and SET 235); since 2010 he is regularly giving lectures at the International Summer School on Radar/SAR organized by the Fraunhofer Institute. He has been also Convener, tutorial Lecturer and Chairman of sessions dedicated to SAR in several international Conferences. Dr. Fornaro has authored more than 200 papers published mainly in peer-review journals and proceedings of international conferences. He served as Guest Editor of special issues on for EURASIP JASP and IEEE Signal Processing Magazine; he is currently Associate Editor of IEEE Geoscience Remote Sensing Letters. He received the Mountbatten Premium by the IEE Society in 1997, the 2011 IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters best paper award and the 2011 best Reviewers mention of the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing journal.

Simona Verde received the M.S. degree (summa cum laude) in Telecommunication Engineering at the University of Naples "Parthenope", Italy, in 2011. In 2015 she obtained the Ph.D degree in Information Engineering at the same University. Since 2011 she has been with IREA - CNR in Naples, where she currently holds the role of research fellow. The research activity is framed in the spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) processing, with particular reference to SAR tomography, SAR interferometry, and differential SAR interferometry. Her main research interest concerns the development of advanced SAR processing techniques, mainly based on multilook and multiresolution tomographic approaches.
Since 2012 she has been serving as reviewer of scientific articles for the main international scientific journals in the sector. In 2013 Dr. Verde has been awarded at the Student Competition of the Joint Urban Remote Sensing Event (JURSE) in São Paulo, Brazil.
In 2017 she has been invited as visiting scientist at the RADI-CAS in Beijing, China.

12:30–13:45: Lunch 

13:45–15:15
GMTI with multi-channel SAR
Joachim Ender (Fraunhofer FHR, D)

Content: Air- or space-borne radar/SAR systems with only a single antenna have severe difficulties to recognize slowly moving targets against the ground clutter. Here, ‘slowly’ here has to be understood relative to the platform velocity, so fast cars are slow compared to the velocity of a SAR satellite. The reason is that the relative radial velocity of the target then is covered by the interval of relative radial velocities of fixed ground scatterers illuminated by the antennas main beam (‘endo-clutter’ targets).
The ambiguity between radial velocity and direction can be resolved by introducing a redundancy in form of two or more phase centers displaced in flight direction and the related number of receive channels.
The lecture starts with the treatment of the easy to understand ‘short CPI case’, i.e. during the coherent integration time the signal of a moving or non-moving scatterer does not leave its range/Doppler cell. For this case classical techniques as displace-phase-center antenna (DPCA) are explained as well as the probabilistically motivated space-time adaptive processing (STAP). We will compare the performance in detection and DOA-estimation for pre- and post-Doppler STAP in dependence on the number of channels and temporal samples.
On this fundament, we pass over to the SAR case with its long temporal azimuth signals including non-linear frequency modulation and range curvatures. First, we study the effects of target motion on the SAR image, followed by the treatment and analysis of the classical two-antenna along-track-interferometry (ATI) and the transition of STAP to the SAR case.
Beyond STAP new GMTI algorithms were developed using the benefits of compressive sensing (CS). They are based on the property that in the Doppler-direction plane ground clutter is concentrated on the clutter ridge and along this continuously distributed, while moving target signals appear beside the ridge, and are sparse.
We will further address the special challenges of GMTI with space based SAR systems. Small objects like cars or small ships have a low RCS and therefore need long integration times, they are principally much slower than the platform, clutter ambiguities are introduced by low PRFs due to large swath widths. Space based systems are usually equipped with at most of two along-track channels. To increase the GMTI performance, subaperture switching modes can synthesize a higher number of spatial channels.
Along the whole tutorial, we illustrate the presented techniques with real data examples obtained by the airborne Fraunhofer radars AER-2 and PAMIR, and the Canadian space based SAR system RADARSAT-2.

Biography: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Joachim Ender held the positions as Director of the Fraunhofer-Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Technology FHR at Wachtberg, Germany, and as chair for High Frequency Sensors and Radar Techniques at the University of Siegen until July 2016.
After his diploma in mathematics / physics he performed research on various topics of radar science since more than forty years. He started his carrier as young scientist in 1976, was appointed as head of department in 1999, and finally took over the function as the Director of the FHR in 2003.

After his retirement he is still active as senior scientist at the FHR and as professor at the Center for Sensor Systems (ZESS) of the University Siegen.
Joachim Ender’s professional expertise encompasses statistical signal processing, estimation and detection theory, non Gaussian signal detection, array processing, performance bounds evaluation with application to radar techniques, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging algorithms with their extension to interferometric and bistatic SAR, inverse SAR (ISAR), ground moving target indication (GMTI) with space-time adaptive processing (STAP), jamming and de-jamming techniques for SAR, compressive sensing applied to radar, phased array architecture and technology, radar system design and analysis.
Joachim Ender is author and co-author of numerous papers. Among other prizes, e.g. the “GRS-S Transactions Prize Paper Award of the year 2006”, he received from EURASIP the “Group Technical Achievement Award - For contributions to Array Signal Processing and Multichannel Synthetic Aperture Radar” and the “Best Paper Award” for a journal publication on compressive sensing. In 2014 he was named as an IEEE-fellow „for contributions to multi-channel synthetic aperture radar and radar array signal processing“. He acted as “Chief Guest Editor” for the special issue of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine “Recent Advances in Radar Imaging”.
He was one of the founder members of the “European Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar” (EUSAR) which takes place every two years since 1996.
In 2009 Joachim Ender founded together with Dr. Matthias Weiß the “International Summer School on Radar and SAR”, taking place each July at the nice location Rolandswerth at the river Rhine.

15:15–15:45: Coffee Break 

15:45–17:15
Observation of the Sea Surface with Multi-Channel SAR
Roland Romeiser (University of Miami, USA) 

Abstract: Since the invention of synthetic aperture radar in the 1950s and the first launch of a spaceborne SAR in the 1960s, an interesting variety of techniques has been developed for SAR-based measurements of ocean surface currents. Some of the techniques are based on conventional single-antenna SAR data, others require two or more antennas. All of them require some special raw data processing and a good understanding of different aspects of ocean wave motions. This 90-minute lecture will give an overview of the different techniques and of their capabilities and limitations in view of practical applications, with special emphasis on the different ways in which "multi-channel" data are generated and utilized. The techniques to be covered include the Doppler centroid anomaly analysis of single-antenna SAR data, along-track interferometry with two antennas, multi-baseline along-track interferometry, dual-beam along-track interferometry, and recent developments in the field of subaperture image reprocessing and dispersion relation filtering of spotlight-mode SAR data for wave, current, and water depth retrievals. Examples from the author's own projects based on SRTM, TerraSAR-X, and TanDEM-X data will be presented, and an outlook to proposed future satellite missions for surface current measurements from space at intermediate to high spatial resolutions (about 10 km to <1 km) will be given. 

Biography: Roland Romeiser received the Dipl.-Phys. degree from the University of Bremen, Germany, in 1990 and the Dr.rer.nat. and Habilitation degrees from the University of Hamburg, Germany, in 1993 and 2007, respectively. From 1990 to 2008 he was a project scientist / permanent staff scientist with the Institute of Oceanography, University of Hamburg. In April 2008 he joined the faculty of the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science of the University of Miami, Florida, USA, where he is now a tenured full professor. Romeiser has more than 30 years of experience in the field of remote sensing of ocean currents, waves, and winds by airborne and spaceborne microwave radars and has published more than 40 peer-reviewed papers in this field, including several pioneering papers on current measurements by SAR along-track interferometry.

17:15: End of Day

09:00–10:30
Distributed SAR/ISAR
Pierfrancesco Lombardo & Debora Pastina (both Uni. Roma, Italy) 

Content: Distributed Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Inverse SAR (ISAR) techniques are emerging as the new frontier of radar imaging with multiple benefits: 

• Boost the potentialities to investigate the characteristics of the imaged scenes, exploiting multiple observation angles;

• Allow the exploitation of already available signals of opportunity, by means of passive SAR and ISAR, able to provide radar images in covert operational mode (i.e. without transmitting e.m. radiations) and with possibly compact and lightweight platforms equipped with receiving only sensors;

• Provide an increase of the imaging capability in terms of geometric characteristics (resolution, swath, …) using multiple receiving platforms (single input multiple output, SIMO) or jointly multiple transmit and multiple receive platforms (multiple input multiple output, MIMO) configurations;

• Allow designing reconfigurable constellations of platforms able to provide different imaging quality characteristics, as a function of the specific requirements, or provide interferometric capability as well as moving target detection capability. 

This tutorial gives an introduction to the distributed SAR and ISAR systems and techniques and gets insight the above benefits, showing advantages, required configurations and parameters as well as examples of application with reference to different case studies and experiments. 

Biography: Dr. Pierfrancesco Lombardo graduated in1991 at the University of Rome "La Sapienza", Italy. After serving at the Official Test Center of the  Italian Air Force, he was associate at Birmingham University (UK) and at Defense Research Agency in Malvern. In 1995 he received his Ph.D and was research associate at Syracuse University (NY-USA). In 1996 he joined the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, where he is presently Full Professor. Dr. Lombardo is associate Editor for Radar Systems for the IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems (AES) since June 2001 and Editor for radar System since January 2016. He is co-recipient of the best paper award, entitled to Mr. B. Carlton, of IEEE Trans. on AES for year 2001 and of the best paper award for the IEEE Trans. on Geoscience and Remote Sensing for year 2003. He is member of IEEE AES Radar System Panel, and the Editorial board of IET Proceedings on Radar Sonar and Navigation.

Dr. Lombardo is involved in, and coordinates, scientific research projects funded by the European Union Framework Programs, Italian Space Agency, the Italian Ministry of Research and the national Industry. He leads a group of  researchers working at the radio-positioning laboratory at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” on radar, remote sensing and navigation. His main interests are in radar adaptive signal processing, radar clutter modelling, radar coherent detection, SAR processing and radio-localization systems.

Dr. Lombardo’s research has been reported in over 250 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 Technical Committee Chairman of the IEEE/ISPRS Workshop on Remote Sensing and Data Fusion over Urban Areas URBAN’2001, Rome, URBAN’2003, Berlin, and URBAN’2005, Tempe (US).  He was also Technical Chairman of the IEEE Radar Conference 2008. 

Dr. Debora Pastina received the Laurea degree in telecommunications engineering and the Ph.D. degree in information and telecommunications engineering from the University of Rome “La Sapienza,” Rome, Italy, in 1996 and 2000, respectively. From July 1998 to March 1999, she carried on research activity with the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Processing Team, Defence Evaluation Research Agency (DERA), Malvern, U.K. She is currently an Assistant Professor with the DIET Department, University of Rome “La Sapienza,” where she teaches different courses in radar remote sensing and telecommunication. She is involved, and is responsible of, scientific research projects funded by the Italian Ministry of Research, by the Italian Space Agency, by  the European Union Framework Programs and by the national radar industry. Her main research interests include SAR and Inverse SAR (ISAR) systems and signal processing techniques, Ground Moving Target Indication (GMTI) techniques, clutter models, coherent and incoherent radar detection in non-Gaussian clutter and CFAR radar techniques. The results of her research activity have been reported in a number of journal and conference papers.

Dr. Pastina was the Chairman of the Local Committee of the IEEE/ISPRS Joint Workshop on Remote Sensing and Data Fusion over Urban Areas (Rome, November 2001). She was the Publication Chair of the 2008 IEEE Radar Conference held in Rome in May 2008. She has been a member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Electronics and Communications (AEÜ, Elsevier) acting as Area Editor for radar systems and techniques since September 2012. She has served in the technical review committee of many international conferences on radar systems and remote sensing. From many years she is frequently reviewer for a number of international technical journals. 

10:30–11:00: Coffee Break 

11:00–12:30
Experimental Aspects of distributed SAR/ISAR Systems
Ingo Walterscheid & Risto Vehmas (Fraunhofer FHR, Germany) 

Content: In recent years a significant number of experiments using distributed SAR/ISAR systems have been conducted to demonstrate the advantages and capabilities of radar systems with spatially separated transmitters and/or receivers. Depending on the application, the distributed system can be operated on satellites, aircrafts or even ground stations.

This tutorial starts with selected topics in the fields of planning and conducting distributed SAR/ISAR experiments. This includes in particular geometrical configurations, expected image resolution, reflected power or time and phase synchronization. Then a comprehensive, up-to-date overview of bi- and multistatic SAR/ISAR experiments as well as operational systems will be presented. The intention of the measurements, specific challenges, image results and potential applications will be discussed. 

Biography: Ingo Walterscheid received the Diploma degree in electrical engineering and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Siegen, Siegen, Germany, in 2002 and 2007, respectively. Since 2002, he is with the Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques (FHR), Wachtberg, Germany. His current research interests include bi- and multistatic synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging, bistatic SAR processing, multi-aspect SAR, bistatic forward-looking SAR, multistatic SAR/GMTI, and multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) radar processing.

Dr. Walterscheid is a member of the Information Technology Society (ITG) of the Association for Electrical, Electronic and Information Technologies (VDE) and a senior member of the IEEE/GRSS. He and his colleagues were recipients of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Transactions Prize Paper Award for a paper on bistatic SAR processing in 2007, and the ITG award of the German Information Technology Society in recognition of a paper on bistatic SAR measurements with spaceborne and airborne sensors in 2011. 

12:30–13:45: Lunch 

13:45–15:15
Circular SAR imagery and applications
Hélène Oriot  (ONERA, France) 

Content: This tutorial aims at presenting circular SAR imagery. Acquiring data along a circular path presents several advantages: persistent imaging of a given area, shadow removal, multi-aspect imaging...

First we will present different ways of processing such data, either by considering the entire dataset for coherent processing, or by splitting the trajectory and processing several images with lower resolution.

In the second part, the phenomenology of such images will be presented with a special focus on altitude dependency.

Finally different applications will be presented: object recognition, DEM computation, moving target detection... 

Biography: Hélène Oriot received the engineer degree from the Ecole Centrale Paris, Paris, France, the M.Sc. degree in ocean engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA, and the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse, France, in 1991, 1992, and 1996, respectively and the authorization to direct research in 2018.

She has been working with ONERA, the French Aerospace Lab, since 1996, first as a scientist in the image processing department where she was involved with 3D reconstruction from stereo optical imagery. She joined the ONERA Electromagnetic and radar Department in 2005. Her research interests include, SAR processing, airborne SAR sensor calibration, very high resolution SAR imagery, circular SAR, interferometry, tomography and GMTI. She is is now Deputy Director of the Electromagnetic and Radar Departement at ONERA. 

15:15–15:45: Coffee Break 

15:45–17:15
Multi-pass Aperture Synthesis
Tim. M. Marston (University of Washington, APL, USA) 

Abstract: Certain synthetic aperture data products, such as volumetric images, require the assembly of arrays that are densely sampled along multiple dimensions; for example, a two dimensional array may be constructed by performing linear scans with varying altitude. Precision relative localization of the scans comprising the set is a pre-requisite for coherent processing. In some cases, the position of the sensor platform is known with sufficient accuracy that very little data-driven navigation refinement or phase correction is necessary; in other cases, isotropic scatterers or corner reflectors may have been distributed across the region of interest to serve as navigation and focus references. This tutorial, however, will be presented from the perspective of sonar signal processing in which position is initially estimated by dead reckoning, absolute elevation is imprecise, the variance of aperture perturbations may be on the order of hundreds of wavelengths, and no artificial isotropic scatterers have been positioned in the scene of interest. In this case the coherent multi-pass aperture synthesis problem becomes predominantly a data-driven process with many similarities to simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). Approaches for data-driven relative scan localization and residual phase error correction from additional effects like medium inhomogeneity will be outlined, and a series of case studies will be used as a springboard to discuss relevant data processing approaches. 

Biography: Timothy Marston received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Seattle Pacific University in 2004 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in acoustics from Penn State in 2006 and 2009. From 2009 to 2010 he worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the department of Physics and Astronomy, College of Arts and Sciences, Washington State University, where he used synthetic aperture techniques to analyze the acoustic response characteristics of submerged elastic structures. From 2010 to 2013 he worked at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City Division, focusing on the application of synthetic-aperture sonar to mine countermeasures and unexploded-ordnance (UXO) remediation. He currently works at the Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington. His research interests include acoustic signal analysis, remote sensing, synthetic aperture signal processing and machine learning. When away from work he enjoys building block castles with his kids and playing Irish music with his wife. 

Image: Multi-pass, multi-band volumetric reconstruction of a Curtiss SB2C Helldiver reconstructed from a synthetic aperture sonar mounted on an autonomous underwater vehicle. 

17:15: End of Day

09:00–10:30
SAR Polarimetry
Laurent Ferro-Famil (Univ. Rennes, France) 

Content: Electromagnetic scattering is by nature a vector phenomenon.  To capture all the information in a scattered wave, one therefore has to measure the complete scattering vector.  Polarimetric radars use polarization diversity to measure the complete scattering matrix.  This course will provide an introduction to the theory, implementation and application of polarimetric synthetic aperture radar.  We will start with the basics; how polarimetric data are acquired and calibrated.  This will be followed with a discussion of the most commonly used polarimetric data representations, including scattering, covariance and coherence matrices.  We will introduce visualizations of polarimetric information, such as polarization signatures and color overlays that highlight different scattering mechanisms.  A brief overview of canonical scattering models, as well as more advanced models describing scattering from bare and vegetated surfaces will be provided.  Finally, we will introduce more advanced polarimetric data analysis techniques, including measures of randomness, eigenvalue and eigenvector analysis.  All concepts will be illustrated with polarimetric SAR data. 

Biography: Laurent Ferro-Famil received the M.S. degree in electronic systems and computer engineering and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Nantes, Nantes, France, in 1996 and 2000, respectively. In 2001, he became an Associate Professor with the University of Rennes 1, Rennes, France. Since 2011, he has been a Full Professor with the University of Rennes 1, where he is currently the Head of the Waves and Signals Department, Institute of Electronics and Telecommunications of Rennes.His current activities in education are concerned with analog electronics, digital communications, microwave theory, signal processing, and polarimetric SAR remote sensing. His research interests include polarimetric SAR signal statistical processing, radar polarimetry theory, and natural media remote sensing using multibaseline PolInSAR data, with application to classification, electromagnetic scattering modeling and physical parameter retrieval, time-frequency analysis, and 3-D reconstruction of environments using tomography. 

10:30–11:00: Coffee Break 

11:00–12:30 

Decomposition of fully Polarimetric SAR Data and its Application

Yoshio Yamaguchi (Niigata Uni., Japan)  

Content: This tutorial aims at understanding the decomposition scheme of fully polarimetric SAR data sets. Among several decomposition methods, this topic deals with model-based scattering power decomposition, i.e., four-component decomposition, which consists of the surface scattering, the double bounce scattering, the volume scattering, and the helix scattering. Once scattering matrices are obtained by PolSAR system, they are converted into a 3 x 3 covariance or coherency matrix which retains the second order statistics of polarimetric information. The measured coherency matrix has nine independent polarimetric parameters. In order to account for all expansion unknowns to fit the above four physical scattering models, the coherency matrix is rotated along the radar line of sight, and then unitary transformed so that it contains less polarimetric parameters (from nine to seven). After the unitary transformation, all expansion unknowns can be determined by the measured data. The 4 scattering powers are obtained directly. These powers are color coded and displayed for image interpretation. Since RGB color-code represent scattering powers, the full color image is beneficial for intuitive understanding for all of us. Several examples are shown using ALOS-1/2 data sets. 

Biography: Yoshio Yamaguchi (Life Fellow, IEEE) is a professor emeritus of Niigata University, Japan. He received the B.E. degree in electronics engineering from Niigata University in 1976, and the M.E. and Dr. Eng. degrees from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, in 1978 and 1983, respectively.

In 1978, he joined the Faculty of Engineering, Niigata University. From 1988 to 1989, he was a Research Associate at the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA. His interests are in the field of radar polarimetry, microwave scattering, decomposition and imaging.

Dr. Yamaguchi has served as Chair of IEEE Geoscience & Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) Japan Chapter (2002–2003), Chair of International Union of Radio Science Commission F Japanese Committee (URSI-F) Japan (2006–2011), Associate Editor for Asian affairs of GRSS Newsletter (2003–2007), and Technical Program Committee (TPC) Co-Chair of the 2011 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS). He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE), Japan. He received Tutorial paper awards from Communications society, IEICE, in 2008 and 2019, IGARSS symposium prize paper award in 2014. He is a recipient of 2008 IEEE GRSS Education Award and 2017 IEEE GRSS Distinguished Achievement Award. 

12:30–13:45: Lunch 

13:45–15:15

Multi-Modal Polarimetric SAR
Scott Hensley (JPL, USA) 

Content: This course will provide an introduction to the combination of polarimetric SAR with other imaging modalities particularly radar interferometry. A short introduction to the concepts of radar interferometry with emphasis on the sensitivity of the phase to vertical structure, kz, and on interferometric correlation and its dependence on volume, SNR and variation of the scattering medium between observations. These concepts will be introduced with a series of simple models illustrating the salient features coupled with examples using real data. A mathematical framework for combining radar polarimetry and interferometry and will be introduced and coherence region defined illustrated with examples. Several techniques for extracting volume information from the volume starting the random volume over ground (RVoG) and variants for dealing with oriented volumes and temporal decorrelation. Additional advanced techniques such as polarimetric coherence tomography PCT and polarimetric radar tomography will be briefly described. 

Biography: Scott Hensley (M’04–SM’10–F’14) received the B.S. degrees in mathematics and physics from the University of California at Irvine, CA, USA, and the Ph.D. degree in mathematics from Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA, where he specialized in the study of differential geometry. He is presently a Senior Research Scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and an Adjunct Professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia. He has a broad range of expertise spanning over 20 years in radar remote sensing, including the design, performance evaluation, processing and application algorithms, calibration, and data interpretation for geophysical applications in both Earth and planetary sciences, and in managing the development of complex radar interferometric systems from inception to operational platforms, including developing novel algorithms for the processing and exploitation of such systems. He has worked on most of the synthetic-aperture-radar systems developed at JPL over the past two decades, including the Magellan and Cassini radars. He was the geographic synthetic aperture radar (GeoSAR) Project Scientist, a simultaneous X-band and P-band airborne radar interferometer for mapping above and beneath the canopy that is now commercially operated by Earth data International. He led the SRTM Interferometric Processor Development Team for a shuttle-based interferometric radar used to map the Earth’s topography between 60° latitude. He worked with the Earth-based Goldstone Solar System Radar to generate topographic maps of the lunar surface. He was the Principal Investigator and is currently the Project Scientist for the NASA UAVSAR program.

15:15–15:45: Coffee Break 

15:45–17:15
Polarimetric Calibration and Application
Laurent Ferro-Famil (Univ. Rennes, F) 

Abstract: Sustaining the earth from the global warming is a main issue in the long history of the earth and the livings. The earth observation data from the space need to be used for this purpose. The synthetic aperture radar (SAR), one of the earth observation sensors, is required to enable better understanding of the earth. Among the radar parameters, polarization is such effective and valuable information to interpret the scattering property from the target and is easily added to the radar system compared to the others, i.e., radar frequency. Thus, the most of the recent SARs - spaceborne and airborne SARs - implement the polarimetry mode as a basic observation functions. SAR polarimetry has over twenty years of the research for calibration, scattering property, interaction between the SAR phase and the wave propagation media (i.e., ionosphere and troposphere).

Japan aerospace exploration agency (JAXA) started the SAR and application development from 1990s, lead by the JERS-1 (1992-1998), succeeded by ALOS/PALSAR (2006-2011), and by ALOS-2 (PALSAR-2) (2014-), hopefully by ALOS-2 follow on ALOS-2 next in 2020 (Funded already), and Airborne-SARs (Pi-SAR-L/Pi-SAR-L2). While the polarimetry is powerful, the larger data amount and the narrower observation swath is shortcoming. The future SAR requires the adoption of the full polarizations overcoming the technology bounding for the data communication between space and the ground.

This tutorial focuses on the calibration of the polarimetric SAR and application. The lecture is composed of the 1) SAR model, 2) polarimetric calibration model-comparison over several methods, 3) polarimetric calibration examples (Here, we deal with the Japanese L-band SARs, PALSAR, PALSAR-2, and Pi-SAR-L combined with the corner reflectors), 4) Measurement of the faraday rotation, and 5) disaster application. 

Biography: Laurent Ferro-Famil received the M.S. degree in electronic systems and computer engineering and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Nantes, Nantes, France, in 1996 and 2000, respectively. In 2001, he became an Associate Professor with the University of Rennes 1, Rennes, France. Since 2011, he has been a Full Professor with the University of Rennes 1, where he is currently the Head of the Waves and Signals Department, Institute of Electronics and Telecommunications of Rennes.His current activities in education are concerned with analog electronics, digital communications, microwave theory, signal processing, and polarimetric SAR remote sensing. His research interests include polarimetric SAR signal statistical processing, radar polarimetry theory, and natural media remote sensing using multibaseline PolInSAR data, with application to classification, electromagnetic scattering modeling and physical parameter retrieval, time-frequency analysis, and 3-D reconstruction of environments using tomography. 

17:15: End of Day

09:00 – Welcome (Rene Guenzkofer, L3Harris) 

09:10 – Multi-stereo SAR precise control points for geometrical calibration of very-high resolution optical imagery (Andrey Giardino / sarmap, Stefano Gagliano and Federica Selva / L3Harris) 

The talk will present an innovative multi-stereo SAR radargrammetric method able to obtain precise control points for correction of very-high resolution optical sensors geometry. Practical examples will be shown using the ENVI/SARscape processing suite.  

10:00 – Discussion / Break 

10:10 – Soil humidity assessment through COSMO-SkyMed time-series: the VMH product.
(Filippo Britti and Federica Pieralice / eGeos) 

Soil humidity assessment through COSMO-SkyMed time-series: the VMH product. 

10:40 – Discussion / Break 

10:50 – Efficient Processing of SAR Time Series with SARscape and ENVI Server
(Nicolai Holzer, Emlyn Hagen, and Alberto Meroni / L3Harris) 

With ENVI 5.6 a new server-based technology is introduced, that allows to run processing remotely or in the background of ENVI Desktop. Specifically, for SAR data bulk processing in the background while visually inspecting the outcomes, or to realize distributed, parallel processing chains on powerful network machines with common data access is a big advantage. When SARscape is used in combination with ENVI Server, automated, reusable workflows can be made turnkey for operational implementation and deployed for large-scale SAR processing from desktop to enterprise environments. 

11:20 – Discussion / Break 

11:30 – INTELLIMATICS, predictive change detection using SAR volumetric processing – persistence algorithm volumetric SAR
(Bill Watkins, Glenn Boudreaux, and Emlyn Hagen / L3Harris) 

The talk will show an advanced, unified capability that provides predictive change detection from sensors based in space and on aircraft in near-real-time. This time-based volumetric processing uses representations that correspond to the real world.  INTELLIMATICS taps into synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and electro-optical (EO) data as well as other sources to create an advanced knowledge base, including cross modality prediction – EO/SAR Volume overlay. It fully automates the production of cross-sensor products that are temporally accessible and machine-query compatible. 

12:00 – Discussion / Wrap-Up 

12:30 – End of Tutorial