Spaceborne SAR Images Research Articles

HYBRID GEOMETRIC CALIBRATION METHOD FOR MULTI-PLATFORM SPACEBORNE SAR IMAGE WITH SPARSE GCPS

Abstract. Geometric calibration is able to provide high-accuracy geometric coordinates of spaceborne SAR image through accurate geometric parameters in the Range-Doppler model by ground control points (GCPs). However, it is very difficult to obtain GCPs that covering large-scale areas, especially in the mountainous regions. In addition, the traditional calibration method is only used for single platform SAR images and can’t support the hybrid geometric calibration for multi-platform images. To solve the above problems, a hybrid geometric calibration method for multi-platform spaceborne SAR images with sparse GCPs is proposed in this paper. First, we calibrate the master image that contains GCPs. Secondly, the point tracking algorithm is used to obtain the tie points (TPs) between the master and slave images. Finally, we calibrate the slave images using TPs as the GCPs. We take the Beijing-Tianjin- Hebei region as an example to study SAR image hybrid geometric calibration method using 3 TerraSAR-X images, 3 TanDEM-X images and 5 GF-3 images covering more than 235 kilometers in the north-south direction. Geometric calibration of all images is completed using only 5 GCPs. The GPS data extracted from GNSS receiver are used to assess the plane accuracy after calibration. The results after geometric calibration with sparse GCPs show that the geometric positioning accuracy is 3 m for TSX/TDX images and 7.5 m for GF-3 images.

EFFECT OF ANTENNA POINTING ERRORS ON SAR IMAGING CONSIDERING THE CHANGE OF THE POINT TARGET LOCATION

Abstract. Towards spaceborne spotlight SAR, the antenna is regulated by the SAR system with specific regularity, so the shaking of the internal mechanism is inevitable. Moreover, external environment also has an effect on the stability of SAR platform. Both of them will cause the jitter of the SAR platform attitude. The platform attitude instability will introduce antenna pointing error on both the azimuth and range directions, and influence the acquisition of SAR original data and ultimate imaging quality. In this paper, the relations between the antenna pointing errors and the three-axis attitude errors are deduced, then the relations between spaceborne spotlight SAR imaging of the point target and antenna pointing errors are analysed based on the paired echo theory, meanwhile, the change of the azimuth antenna gain is considered as the spotlight SAR platform moves ahead. The simulation experiments manifest the effects on spotlight SAR imaging caused by antenna pointing errors are related to the target location, that is, the pointing errors of the antenna beam will severely influence the area far away from the scene centre of azimuth direction in the illuminated scene.

Suppression of Azimuth Ambiguities in Spaceborne SAR Images Using Spectral Selection and Extrapolation

Azimuth ambiguity may introduce false targets into synthetic aperture radar images, particularly likely in inshore and oceanic observation. To suppress the azimuth ambiguities for any acquisition mode, a new model is developed to describe the impact of spatially variant azimuth antenna pattern weighting on azimuth ambiguities. By accurately estimating the ratio of ambiguous to main zone energy based on the model, the proposed algorithm selects the subspectra with less ambiguous disturbance, and adopts extrapolation with weighted energy measure to obtain a full spectrum. Due to spectral selection and extrapolation, the novel algorithm achieves superior performance in azimuth ambiguity suppression and resolution preservation, which is compared with the classical algorithm, and validated by applying TerraSAR-X and RADARSAT-2 images.

Design and implementation of a multi-channel space-borne SAR imaging system on Vivado HLS

Design and implementation of a multi-channel space-borne SAR imaging system on Vivado HLS

Simulation method of high-resolution spaceborne SAR imaging for the South-to-North transmission line

Simulation method of high-resolution spaceborne SAR imaging for the South-to-North transmission line

Evaluation of the Use of Sub-Pixel Offset Tracking Techniques to Monitor Landslides in Densely Vegetated Steeply Sloped Areas

Sub-Pixel Offset Tracking (sPOT) is applied to derive high-resolution centimetre-level landslide rates in the Three Gorges Region of China using TerraSAR-X Hi-resolution Spotlight (TSX HS) space-borne SAR images. These results contrast sharply with previous use of conventional differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (DInSAR) techniques in areas with steep slopes, dense vegetation and large variability in water vapour which indicated around 12% phase coherent coverage. By contrast, sPOT is capable of measuring two dimensional deformation of large gradient over steeply sloped areas covered in dense vegetation. Previous applications of sPOT in this region relies on corner reflectors (CRs), (high coherence features) to obtain reliable measurements. However, CRs are expensive and difficult to install, especially in remote areas; and other potential high coherence features comparable with CRs are very few and outside the landslide boundary. The resultant sub-pixel level deformation field can be statistically analysed to yield multi-modal maps of deformation regions. This approach is shown to have a significant impact when compared with previous offset tracking measurements of landslide deformation, as it is demonstrated that sPOT can be applied even in densely vegetated terrain without relying on high-contrast surface features or requiring any de-noising process.

BUILDING HEIGHT ESTIMATION FROM HIGH RESOLUTION SAR IMAGERY VIA MODEL-BASED GEOMETRICAL STRUCTURE PREDICTION

Height extraction by radar remote sensing is an attractive issue for the building detection and recognition. According to the analysis on the building geometrical properties in the SAR imagery, a novel height estimation algorithm is proposed following a model-based geometrical structure prediction and matching strategy. The range Doppler equation is introduced and simplified for the building 2D geometrical structure prediction in the slant image plane. An evaluation function implementing the ratio of exponentially weighted averages (ROEWA) is also established for the matching between the predicted structure and the observed SAR image. By incorporating the genetic algorithm (GA), the evaluation function is maximized to get the optimal height parameter. The experimental results with the simulated and real airborne and spaceborne SAR images show that the proposed method could efficiently estimate building height from single SAR imagery, and achieve better performance than two popular algorithms with the partial occlusion case.

Doppler-Related Distortions in TOPS SAR Images

A direct consequence of the TOPS acquisition geometry and the steering in azimuth of the antenna is the timevarying Doppler centroid within bursts. If this fact is not properly accommodated during SAR image formation, undesired distortions in both azimuth and range dimensions of the focused SAR images may appear. Azimuth distortions are caused by the local mismatch of both squint and topography. Range distortions arise from the inaccurate accommodation of the intrapulse motion of the platform, usually known as the stop-and-go approximation. Conventional spaceborne SAR image formation schemes will be, in general, unable to provide accurate TOPS SAR images. These distortions are discussed and evaluated for exemplary low-Earthorbit SAR scenarios. Compensation strategies are presented and validated with TerraSAR-X TOPS data. A discussion of the potential impact on the Sentinel-1 interferometric-wide-swath and extra-wide-swath modes (i.e., TOPS) is also given.

Impact of antenna beam granularity on sliding spotlight spaceborne SAR image quality

Impact of antenna beam granularity on sliding spotlight spaceborne SAR image quality

SURF 기법을 활용한 위성 SAR 다중해상도 영상의 정합 및 기하보정

위성 SAR 영상의 활용이 증가하면서 영상의 해석 및 융합을 위한 정밀 기하보정에 대한 필요성이 높아지고 있다. 특히 광역감시 목적으로 활용되기 위해 서로 다른 해상도를 갖는 SAR 영상간 정보융합도 활발해지고 있다. 일반적으로 SAR 영상의 기하보정은 위성의 궤도 및 자세정보를 활용하여 수행할 수 있지만 SAR 센서의 궤도 및 시스템 오차, 대상지형 특성에 의한 왜곡으로 인해 추가적인 보정이 필요하게 된다. SAR 영상을 통한 변화탐지나 타 영상과의 융합에 적용하기 위해서는 기하 오차 보정이 반드시 선행되어야 한다. 이를 위해 다수의 지상 기준점을 선정하고 이를 포함하는 기준 영상과 비교하여 원본 영상에서 대응점을 찾는 방식으로 정밀 기하보정을 수행할 수 있다. Speeded Up Robust Feature (SURF) 기법은 쉽고 빠르게 영상의 기준점을 찾을 수 있지만 상대적으로 해상도가 낮고 스펙클 잡음에 영향을 받는 SAR 영상에서는 활용하기가 어렵다고 알려져 있다. 본 논문에서는 SURF 기법을 위성 SAR 영상에 적용할 때 발생할 수 있는 오차를 추출하고 영상 특성에 따른 성능 변화를 분석하였다. SURF 알고리즘의 적용이 가능한 입력 변수의 적정 범위를 제시하고 그에 따른 영상 정합의 오차를 분석하여 중저해상도의 위성 SAR 영상에 대해서도 SURF 기법을 통한 기하 보정 및 영상 정합이 적용될 수 있음을 검증하였다. 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.

The Establishment of the SAR images database System Based on Oracle and ArcSDE

Synthetic aperture radar is a kind of microwave imaging system, and has the advantages of multi-band, multi-polarization and multi-angle. At present, there is no SAR images database system based on typical features. For solving problems in interpretation and identification, a new SAR images database system of the typical features is urgent in the current development need.In this article, a SAR images database system based on Oracle and ArcSDE was constructed. The main works involving are as follows: (1) SAR image data was calibrated and corrected geometrically and geometrically. Besides, the fully polarimetric image was processed as the coherency matrix[T] to preserve the polarimetric information. (2) After analyzing multiple space borne SAR images, the metadata table was defined as: IMAGEID; Name of features; Latitude and Longitude; Sensor name; Range and Azimuth resolution etc. (3) Through the comparison between GeoRaster and ArcSDE, result showed ArcSDE is a more appropriate technology to store images in a central database.The System stores and manages multisource SAR image data well, reflects scattering, geometry, polarization, band and angle characteristics, and combines with analysis of the managed objects and service objects of the database as well as focuses on constructing SAR image system in the aspects of data browse and data retrieval. According the analysis of characteristics of SAR images such as scattering, polarization, incident angle and wave band information, different weights can be given to these characteristics. Then an interpreted tool is formed to provide an efficient platform for interpretation.

An Auto-registration Method for Space-borne SAR Images based FFT-shift Theory and Correlation Analysis in Multi-scale Scheme

An Auto-registration Method for Space-borne SAR Images based FFT-shift Theory and Correlation Analysis in Multi-scale Scheme

SPACEBORNE SAR IMAGERY STEREO POSITIONING BASED ON RANGE-COPLANARITY EQUATION

Abstract. Stereo positioning is a important content for Spaceborne SAR imagery mapping, which is still lack of investigation depend on exterior orientation elements. In this paper, we firstly introduced the Range-Coplanarity (R-Cp) geometric imaging equation and its character for radar imagery, compared the difference and relationship between R-Cp and R-D model, and build stereo positioning rigorous model for spaceborne SAR imagery based on the R-Cp equation, satellite orbit, and pose refinement model. Then separate taking TerraSAR-X images in mountainous terrain observed from same and opposite side-looking direction as test data, we presented the initial attitude value acquirement method for TerraSAR-X image after moving compensation, analyzed stereo positioning precision according to amounts and spatial distributions of GCPs and lengths of baseline between SAR antennas, and also compared the precision with R-D model. the proposed stereo positioning model avoids SAR signal imaging parameters during the geometric processing, with one GCP it could improved the plan and height precision from (17.9m,29.2m) to (10.3m,6.1m) in the test of opposite side-looking direction images, and even had a better accuracy than R-D model when more GCPs were used, which indicate that R-Cp model have a potential application in spaceborne SAR image stereo positioning.

Suppressing azimuth ambiguity in spaceborne SAR images based on compressed sensing

In spaceborne synthetic aperture radar, undersampling at the rate of the pulse repetition frequency causes azimuth ambiguity, which induces ghost into the images. This paper introduces compressed sensing for azimuth ambiguity suppression and presents two novel methods from the perspectives of system design and image formation, known as azimuth random sampling and ambiguity separation, respectively. The first method makes the imaging results for the ambiguity zones as disperse as possible while ensuring that the imaging results for the main scene are affected as little as possible. The second method separates the ambiguity signals from the echoes and achieves imaging results without the ambiguity effect. Simulation results show that the two methods can reduce the ambiguity levels by about 16 dB and 99.37%, respectively.

Application of the RPC model for spaceborne SAR image geometric processing

An increasing number of low, medium, and high resolution SAR satellites creates a demand for a generalized sensor model to replace the rigorous sensor model (RSM). The rational polynomial coefficient (RPC) model is a generic sensor model which accurately fits the object-image geometry for various sensor systems with different coefficient values. It has been widely used as an alternative to RSM for photogrammetric processing of optical images, but its applications to SAR images are rarely discussed in publications. In this paper, the feasibility and practicability of the RPC model for SAR images are studied. The RPC model can not only be used to replace the RSM (range–Doppler model for SAR), but also applied to the processing chain for SAR data, thus facilitating the processing of SAR and InSAR data for end users.

The Technique Researching for Ship and Ship Wake Detection Using Spaceborne SAR Images

As a available measure which being paid great attention, using spaceborne SAR to detect ship has more virtues than others. This paper summarizes this technology based on the achievement of the Spaceborne SAR field in recent,and obtain the available method for detecting the ship and ship wake.

Research on Mending of Space-borne Sliding Spotlight SAR Imaging Model Error

合成孔径雷达(SAR)滑动聚束模式是介于传统条带模式和聚束模式之间的成像模式。该文针对高分辨率宽覆盖星载滑动聚束SAR合成孔径时间和一次成像时间均较长的特点，分析了由此引发的传统等效距离模型精度不足以及模型参数沿方位向时变性显著的问题。借鉴机载SAR运动补偿理论，提出了利用星载滑动聚束SAR非匀速直线运动引起的到虚拟转动点距离误差来校正方位时变模型参数的方法，并相应给了判断是否需要校正的依据；针对校正后数据中孔径内残留的等效距离模型三次误差，提出了在多普勒域内的统一补偿的方法；结合上述模型误差校正方法，重新定义了滑动聚束DCS算法中的CS因子，给出了处理流程。最后，用计算机仿真实验验证了模型校正方法的有效性。

Exploration of Subsidence Estimation by Persistent Scatterer InSAR on Time Series of High Resolution TerraSAR-X Images

Ground subsidence is a major concern for land use planning and engineering risk assessment. This paper explores subsidence detection by the persistent scatterer (PS) interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) technique using the multitemporal high resolution spaceborne SAR images. We first describe the mathematical models and the data reduction procedures of the PS solution. The experiments of subsidence detection are then carried out over the Jinghai County in Tianjin (China) which has been sinking due to overuse of groundwater. The time series of high resolution SAR images collected by the X-band radar sensor onboard the satellite TerraSAR-X (TSX) are utilized for the PS detection, PS networking and subsidence estimation. The experimental results demonstrate that the high resolution of TSX SAR images can dramatically increase the PSs' density and coverage extent, especially in the built-up areas. Subsidence values can be extracted on the individual objects like buildings, street lamps and manhole covers, and on the linear engineering structures like the Jinghu high-speed railway. The PS InSAR with short radar wavelength (3.1 cm) is quite sensitive to ground displacement in the radar line-of-sight direction, and the derived subsidence measurements are in good agreement with the in situ data taken by optical leveling.

Investigation on Electronic Azimuth Beam Steering in the Spaceborne Sar Imaging Modes

This paper reviews different spaceborne SAR imaging modes with electronic azimuth beam steering adopted for greater azimuth resolution in spotlight/sliding spotlight mode and wider swath coverage in TOPS (Terrain Observation by Progressive Scans) mode. However, the use of electronic beam steering via a planar phased antenna, especially in the spaceborne SAR system, leads to a quantization of the beam steering law, grating lobes and main lobe gain reduction. The distorted synthetic azimuth antenna pattern (AAP) due to angle quantization and squinted angle will affect system performances. These effects in different imaging modes are analyzed in detail for the design of future spaceborne SAR missions.

Rational function modeling for spaceborne SAR datasets

As a kind of generic sensor model, the rational function model (RFM) has been widely used in geometric processing of optical images, but has not yet been applied to SAR datasets. In this article the feasibility and methodology of rational function (RF) modeling for SAR datasets are investigated. After a review of the mathematic formulation of the RF model and the Range–Doppler model for SAR systems, the feasibility of applying RFM to SAR datasets is analyzed. Afterwards a two-stage approach is proposed as the key technique for SAR RF modeling to solve unknown parameters of RFM in a fast and unbiased way. The effectiveness and advantages of this approach are demonstrated by comparisons with traditional methods. Experimental results obtained for various spaceborne SAR datasets of different processing levels show that RFM is a suitable replacement of the rigorous Range–Doppler model for spaceborne SAR images. Furthermore, the impacts of several factors including the control point grid size, the number of elevation layers, and the orbit precision on SAR RFM solutions are evaluated quantitatively. The results show that the number of elevation layers is a key factor in SAR RF modeling, and its value should be set carefully according to terrain conditions of study areas. Finally, potential applications of SAR RFM are discussed in brief.