109 research outputs found

    Beam scanning by liquid-crystal biasing in a modified SIW structure

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    A fixed-frequency beam-scanning 1D antenna based on Liquid Crystals (LCs) is designed for application in 2D scanning with lateral alignment. The 2D array environment imposes full decoupling of adjacent 1D antennas, which often conflicts with the LC requirement of DC biasing: the proposed design accommodates both. The LC medium is placed inside a Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) modified to work as a Groove Gap Waveguide, with radiating slots etched on the upper broad wall, that radiates as a Leaky-Wave Antenna (LWA). This allows effective application of the DC bias voltage needed for tuning the LCs. At the same time, the RF field remains laterally confined, enabling the possibility to lay several antennas in parallel and achieve 2D beam scanning. The design is validated by simulation employing the actual properties of a commercial LC medium

    1-D broadside-radiating leaky-wave antenna based on a numerically synthesized impedance surface

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    A newly-developed deterministic numerical technique for the automated design of metasurface antennas is applied here for the first time to the design of a 1-D printed Leaky-Wave Antenna (LWA) for broadside radiation. The surface impedance synthesis process does not require any a priori knowledge on the impedance pattern, and starts from a mask constraint on the desired far-field and practical bounds on the unit cell impedance values. The designed reactance surface for broadside radiation exhibits a non conventional patterning; this highlights the merit of using an automated design process for a design well known to be challenging for analytical methods. The antenna is physically implemented with an array of metal strips with varying gap widths and simulation results show very good agreement with the predicted performance

    Interferometric orbit determination system for geosynchronous SAR missions: experimental proof of concept

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    Future Geosynchronous Synthetic Aperture Radar (GEOSAR) missions will provide permanent monitoring of continental areas of the planet with revisit times of less than 24 h. Several GEOSAR missions have been studied in the USA, Europe, and China with different applications, including water cycle monitoring and early warning of disasters. GEOSAR missions require unprecedented orbit determination precision in order to form focused Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images from Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO). A precise orbit determination technique based on interferometry is proposed, including a proof of concept based on an experimental interferometer using three antennas separated 10–15 m. They provide continuous orbit observations of present communication satellites operating at GEO as illuminators of opportunity. The relative phases measured between the receivers are used to estimate the satellite position. The experimental results prove the interferometer is able to track GEOSAR satellites based on the transmitted signals. This communication demonstrates the consistency and feasibility of the technique in order to foster further research with longer interferometric baselines that provide observables delivering higher orbital precision.This work has been supported by the Spanish Science, Research and Innovation Plan (MICINN) with Project Codes TEC2017-85244-C2-2-P and PID2020-117303GB-C21 and by Unidad de Excelencia Maria de Maeztu MDM-2016-0600 financed by the Agencia Estatal de Investigación, Spain.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

    Advanced Techniques for Ground Penetrating Radar Imaging

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    Ground penetrating radar (GPR) has become one of the key technologies in subsurface sensing and, in general, in non-destructive testing (NDT), since it is able to detect both metallic and nonmetallic targets. GPR for NDT has been successfully introduced in a wide range of sectors, such as mining and geology, glaciology, civil engineering and civil works, archaeology, and security and defense. In recent decades, improvements in georeferencing and positioning systems have enabled the introduction of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) techniques in GPR systems, yielding GPR–SAR systems capable of providing high-resolution microwave images. In parallel, the radiofrequency front-end of GPR systems has been optimized in terms of compactness (e.g., smaller Tx/Rx antennas) and cost. These advances, combined with improvements in autonomous platforms, such as unmanned terrestrial and aerial vehicles, have fostered new fields of application for GPR, where fast and reliable detection capabilities are demanded. In addition, processing techniques have been improved, taking advantage of the research conducted in related fields like inverse scattering and imaging. As a result, novel and robust algorithms have been developed for clutter reduction, automatic target recognition, and efficient processing of large sets of measurements to enable real-time imaging, among others. This Special Issue provides an overview of the state of the art in GPR imaging, focusing on the latest advances from both hardware and software perspectives

    IoT Applications Computing

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    The evolution of emerging and innovative technologies based on Industry 4.0 concepts are transforming society and industry into a fully digitized and networked globe. Sensing, communications, and computing embedded with ambient intelligence are at the heart of the Internet of Things (IoT), the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and Industry 4.0 technologies with expanding applications in manufacturing, transportation, health, building automation, agriculture, and the environment. It is expected that the emerging technology clusters of ambient intelligence computing will not only transform modern industry but also advance societal health and wellness, as well as and make the environment more sustainable. This book uses an interdisciplinary approach to explain the complex issue of scientific and technological innovations largely based on intelligent computing

    Approaches for Road Surface Roughness Estimation Using Airborne Polarimetric SAR

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    The road surface roughness is an important parameter that determines the quality of a road network. It has a direct influence on the grip and skid resistance of the vehicles. For this reason, this parameter has to be periodically monitored to keep track of its changes. Nowadays, road surface roughness is measured by driving measurement vehicles equipped with laser scanners all over the country. But, this approach is very costly, labor-intensive, and time-consuming. This study is done to evaluate the potential of high-resolution airborne polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to remotely estimate the road surface roughness on a wide scale. Different SAR backscatter-based semi-empirical models and SAR polarimetry-based models for surface roughness estimation are implemented in this study. Also, a new semi-empirical model is proposed in this study which is trained specifically for the road surface roughness estimation. Additive noise subtraction, upper sigma nought threshold masking, and lower signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) threshold masking techniques were implemented in this study to improve the reliability of road surface roughness estimation. The feasibility of this approach is tested using fully polarimetric X-band datasets acquired with DLRs airborne radar sensor F-SAR. The surface roughness results estimated using these airborne SAR datasets show good agreement with the ground truth surface roughness values and the results are discussed in this article

    Research progress on geosynchronous synthetic aperture radar

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    Based on its ability to obtain two-dimensional (2D) high-resolution images in all-time and all-weather conditions, spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has become an important remote sensing technique and the study of such systems has entered a period of vigorous development. Advanced imaging modes such as radar interferometry, tomography, and multi-static imaging, have been demonstrated. However, current in-orbit spaceborne SARs, which all operate in low Earth orbits, have relatively long revisit times ranging from several days to dozens of days, restricting their temporal sampling rate. Geosynchronous SAR (GEO SAR) is an active research area because it provides significant new capability, especially its much-improved temporal sampling. This paper reviews the research progress of GEO SAR technologies in detail. Two typical orbit schemes are presented, followed by the corresponding key issues, including system design, echo focusing, main disturbance factors, repeat-track interferometry, etc, inherent to these schemes. Both analysis and solution research of the above key issues are described. GEO SAR concepts involving multiple platforms are described, including the GEO SAR constellation, GEO-LEO/airborne/unmanned aerial vehicle bistatic SAR, and formation flying GEO SAR (FF-GEO SAR). Due to the high potential of FF-GEO SAR for three-dimensional (3D) deformation retrieval and coherence-based SAR tomography (TomoSAR), we have recently carried out some research related to FF-GEO SAR. This research, which is also discussed in this paper, includes developing a formation design method and an improved TomoSAR processing algorithm. It is found that GEO SAR will continue to be an active topic in the aspect of data processing and multi-platform concept in the near future

    Radar Imaging in Challenging Scenarios from Smart and Flexible Platforms

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    Country-specific Ground-based Bistatic Radar Clutter Analysis of Rural Environments

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    This thesis presents a novel statistical analysis of bistatic radar rural ground clutter for different terrain types of German rural environments under low grazing angles. A country-specific clutter analysis for subgroups of rural environments rather than for the rural environment as a whole will be presented. Therefore, the rural environment is divided into four dominant subgroup terrain types, namely fields with low vegetation, fields with high vegetation, plantations of small trees and forest environments, representing a typical rural German or even Central European environment. The thesis will present the bistatic clutter characteristics for both the summer and the winter vegetation. Therefore, bistatic measurement campaigns have been carried out during the summer 2019 and the winter of 2019/20 in the aforementioned four different rural terrain types. The measurements were carried out according to a designed bistatic measurement methodology to obtain comparable results and to be used for different radar applications in the radar relevant X-band at a center frequency of 8.85 GHz and over a bandwidth of 100 MHz, according to available transmit permissions. The distinction of the rural terrain into different subgroups enables a more precise and accurate clutter analysis and modeling of the statistical properties as will be shown in the presented results. A clear separation of the different types of rural terrain and the influence of the seasons was worked out. Additionally, model functions for the relevant parameters, characterizing the the bistatic clutter, are presented for their analytical description. The statistical properties are derived from the clutter regions of processed range-Doppler domain data, using an improved range-Doppler processing approach, for each of the four terrain types and the corresponding seasons. The data basis for the clutter analysis are the processed range-Doppler maps from the bistatic radar measurements using a dual-channel measurement approach, with a separate reference and surveillance channel. According to the authors’ current knowledge, a similar investigation based on real bistatic radar measurement data with the division into terrain subgroups and additionally for different season has not yet been carried out and published for a German rural environment. The presented data and results therefore have a significant impact on the research field of bistatic ground clutter, in which there are currently only very few results in the frequency range discussed in this thesis

    3rd Arctic Science Ministerial Report - Knowledge for a Sustainable Arctic

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    To strengthen international cooperation and respond to the severe threat of climate change and biodiversity loss in the Arctic, the Icelandic Ministry of Education, Science and Culture and the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology co-organized the 3rd Arctic Science Ministerial (ASM3) which was held in Tokyo on 08-09 May 2021. Delegates from 27 different countries and the European Commission, as well as representatives from Arctic Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations, gathered in Tokyo and online to discuss developments in international research and commit to future cooperation. This meeting was built on the themes initiated by the first Arctic Science Ministerial hosted by the United States and held in Washington, D.C. in 2016, and the second Arctic Science Ministerial co-hosted by the European Commission, Finland and Germany and held in Berlin in 2018. Knowledge for a Sustainable Arctic was the overarching theme for ASM3 and included four sub-themes under the titles: Observe, Understand, Respond, Strengthen. These reflect elements of the previous ASM themes and reintroduce an emphasis on education which appeared in the first Ministerial
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