Coastal winds are strongly influenced by topology and discontinuity between land and sea surfaces. Wind assessment from remote sensing in such a complex area remains a challenge. Space-borne scatterometer does not pro...Coastal winds are strongly influenced by topology and discontinuity between land and sea surfaces. Wind assessment from remote sensing in such a complex area remains a challenge. Space-borne scatterometer does not provide any information about the coastal wind field, as the coarse spatial resolution hampers the radar backscattering. Synthetic aperture radar （SAR） with a high spatial resolution and all-weather observation abilities has become one of the most important tools for ocean wind retrieval, especially in the coastal area. Conventional methods of wind field retrieval from SAR, however, require wind direction as initial information, such as the wind direction from numerical weather prediction models （NWP）, which may not match the time of SAR image acquiring. Fortunately, the polarimetric observations of SAR enable independent wind retrieval from SAR images alone. In order to accurately measure coastal wind fields, this paper proposes a new method of using co-polarization backscattering coefficients from polarimetric SAR observations up to polarimetric correlation backscattering coefficients, which are acquired from the conjugate product of co-polarization backscatter and cross-polarization backscatter. Co-polarization backscattering coefficients and polarimetric correlation backscattering coefficients are obtained form Radarsat-2 single-look complex （SLC） data.The maximum likelihood estimation is used to gain the initial results followed by the coarse spatial filtering and fine spatial filtering. Wind direction accuracy of the final inversion results is 10.67 with a wind speed accuracy of 0.32 m/s. Unlike previous methods, the methods described in this article utilize the SAR data itself to obtain the wind vectors and do not need external wind directional information. High spatial resolution and high accuracy are the most important features of the method described herein since the use of full polarimetric observations contains more information about the space measured.This article is a useful addition to the work of independent SAR wind retrieval. The experimental results herein show that it is feasible to employ the co-polarimetric backscattering coefficients and the polarimetric correlation backscattering coefficients for coastal wind field retrieval.展开更多
Compared with single-polarized synthetic aperture radar （SAR） images, full polarimetric SAIl images contain not only geometrical and backward scattering characteristics, but also the polarization features of the sca...Compared with single-polarized synthetic aperture radar （SAR） images, full polarimetric SAIl images contain not only geometrical and backward scattering characteristics, but also the polarization features of the scattering targets. Therefore, the polarimetric SAR has more advantages for oil spill detection on the sea surface. As a crucial step in the oil spill detection, a feature extraction directly influences the accuracy of oil spill discrimination. The polarimetric features of sea oil spills, such as polarimetric entropy, average scatter angle, in the full polarimetric SAR images are analyzed firstly. And a new polarimetric parameter P which reflects the proportion between Bragg and specular scattering signals is proposed. In order to investigate the capability of the polarimetric features for observing an oil spill, systematic comparisons and analyses of the multipolarization features are provided on the basis of the full polarimetric SAR images acquired by SIR-C/X-SAR and Radarsat-2. The experiment results show that in C-band SAR images the oil spills can be detected more easily than in L-band SAR images under low to moderate wind speed conditions. Moreover, it also finds that the new polarimetric parameter is sensitive to the sea surface scattering mechanisms. And the experiment results demonstrate that the new polarimetric parameter and pedestal height perform better than other polarimetric parameters for the oil spill detection in the C-band SAR images.展开更多
The cryosphere is the frozen part of the Earth’s system. Snow and ice are the main constituents of the cryosphere and may be found in different states, such as snow, freshwater ice, sea ice, perma-frost, and continen...The cryosphere is the frozen part of the Earth’s system. Snow and ice are the main constituents of the cryosphere and may be found in different states, such as snow, freshwater ice, sea ice, perma-frost, and continental ice masses in the form of glaciers and ice sheets. The present review mainly deals with state-of-the-art applications of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) with a special emphasize on cryospheric information extraction. SAR is the most important active microwave remote sensing (RS) instrument for ice monitoring, which provides high-resolution images of the Earth’s surface. SAR is an ideal sensor in RS technology, which works in all-weather and day and night conditions to provide useful unprecedented information, especially in the cryospheric regions which are almost inaccessible areas on Earth. This paper addresses the technological evolution of SAR and its applications in studying the various components of the cryosphere. The arrival of SAR radically changed the capabilities of information extraction related to ice type, new ice formation, and ice thickness. SAR applications can be divided into two broad classes-polarimetric applications and interferometric applications. Polarimetric SAR has been effectively used for mapping calving fronts, crevasses, surface structures, sea ice, detection of icebergs, etc. The paper also summarizes both the operational and climate change research by using SAR for sea ice parameter detection. Digital elevation model (DEM) generation and glacier velocity mapping are the two most important applications used in cryosphere using SAR interferometry or interferometric SAR (InSAR). Space-borne InSAR techniques for measuring ice flow velocity and topography have developed rapidly over the last decade. InSAR is capable of measuring ice motion that has radically changed the science of glaciers and ice sheets. Measurement of temperate glacier velocities and surface characteristics by using airborne and space-borne interferometric satellite images have been the significant application in glaciology and cryospheric studies. Space-borne InSAR has contributed to major evolution in many research areas of glaciological study by measuring ice-stream flow velocity, improving understanding of ice-shelf processes, yielding velocity for flux-gate based mass-balance assessment, and mapping flow of mountain glaciers. The present review summarizes the salient development of SAR applications in cryosphere and glaciology.展开更多
Speckle filtering is an indispensable pre-processing step for applications of polarimetric synthetic aperture radar （POLSAR）, such as terrain classification, target detection, etc. As one of the most typical methods...Speckle filtering is an indispensable pre-processing step for applications of polarimetric synthetic aperture radar （POLSAR）, such as terrain classification, target detection, etc. As one of the most typical methods, the polarimetric whitening filter （PWF） can be used to produce a minimum-speckle image by combining the complex elements of the scattering matrix, but polarimetric information is lost after the filtering process. A polarimetric filter based on subspaze decomposition which was proposed by Cu et al specializes in retrieving principle scattering characteristics, but the corresponding mean value of an image after filtering is not kept well. A new filter is proposed for improving the disadvantage based on subspace decomposition. Under the constraint that a weighted combination of the polarimetric SAR images equals to the output of the PWF, the Euclidean distance between an unfiltered parameter vector and a signal space vector is minimized so that noises can be reduced. It is also shown that the proposed method is equivalent to the subspace filter in the case of no constraint. Experimental results with the NASA/JPL airborne polarimetric SAR data demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.展开更多
基金The National Natural Science Foundation of China under contract Nos 41306186,41076012 and 41276019the Youth Science Fund Project of State Oceanic Administration of China
文摘Coastal winds are strongly influenced by topology and discontinuity between land and sea surfaces. Wind assessment from remote sensing in such a complex area remains a challenge. Space-borne scatterometer does not provide any information about the coastal wind field, as the coarse spatial resolution hampers the radar backscattering. Synthetic aperture radar （SAR） with a high spatial resolution and all-weather observation abilities has become one of the most important tools for ocean wind retrieval, especially in the coastal area. Conventional methods of wind field retrieval from SAR, however, require wind direction as initial information, such as the wind direction from numerical weather prediction models （NWP）, which may not match the time of SAR image acquiring. Fortunately, the polarimetric observations of SAR enable independent wind retrieval from SAR images alone. In order to accurately measure coastal wind fields, this paper proposes a new method of using co-polarization backscattering coefficients from polarimetric SAR observations up to polarimetric correlation backscattering coefficients, which are acquired from the conjugate product of co-polarization backscatter and cross-polarization backscatter. Co-polarization backscattering coefficients and polarimetric correlation backscattering coefficients are obtained form Radarsat-2 single-look complex （SLC） data.The maximum likelihood estimation is used to gain the initial results followed by the coarse spatial filtering and fine spatial filtering. Wind direction accuracy of the final inversion results is 10.67 with a wind speed accuracy of 0.32 m/s. Unlike previous methods, the methods described in this article utilize the SAR data itself to obtain the wind vectors and do not need external wind directional information. High spatial resolution and high accuracy are the most important features of the method described herein since the use of full polarimetric observations contains more information about the space measured.This article is a useful addition to the work of independent SAR wind retrieval. The experimental results herein show that it is feasible to employ the co-polarimetric backscattering coefficients and the polarimetric correlation backscattering coefficients for coastal wind field retrieval.
基金The National Natural Science Foundation of China under contract Nos 41576170 and 41376179the Public Science and Technology Research Funds Projects of Ocean(Ocean University of China) under contract No.2013418025-2
文摘Compared with single-polarized synthetic aperture radar （SAR） images, full polarimetric SAIl images contain not only geometrical and backward scattering characteristics, but also the polarization features of the scattering targets. Therefore, the polarimetric SAR has more advantages for oil spill detection on the sea surface. As a crucial step in the oil spill detection, a feature extraction directly influences the accuracy of oil spill discrimination. The polarimetric features of sea oil spills, such as polarimetric entropy, average scatter angle, in the full polarimetric SAR images are analyzed firstly. And a new polarimetric parameter P which reflects the proportion between Bragg and specular scattering signals is proposed. In order to investigate the capability of the polarimetric features for observing an oil spill, systematic comparisons and analyses of the multipolarization features are provided on the basis of the full polarimetric SAR images acquired by SIR-C/X-SAR and Radarsat-2. The experiment results show that in C-band SAR images the oil spills can be detected more easily than in L-band SAR images under low to moderate wind speed conditions. Moreover, it also finds that the new polarimetric parameter is sensitive to the sea surface scattering mechanisms. And the experiment results demonstrate that the new polarimetric parameter and pedestal height perform better than other polarimetric parameters for the oil spill detection in the C-band SAR images.
文摘The cryosphere is the frozen part of the Earth’s system. Snow and ice are the main constituents of the cryosphere and may be found in different states, such as snow, freshwater ice, sea ice, perma-frost, and continental ice masses in the form of glaciers and ice sheets. The present review mainly deals with state-of-the-art applications of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) with a special emphasize on cryospheric information extraction. SAR is the most important active microwave remote sensing (RS) instrument for ice monitoring, which provides high-resolution images of the Earth’s surface. SAR is an ideal sensor in RS technology, which works in all-weather and day and night conditions to provide useful unprecedented information, especially in the cryospheric regions which are almost inaccessible areas on Earth. This paper addresses the technological evolution of SAR and its applications in studying the various components of the cryosphere. The arrival of SAR radically changed the capabilities of information extraction related to ice type, new ice formation, and ice thickness. SAR applications can be divided into two broad classes-polarimetric applications and interferometric applications. Polarimetric SAR has been effectively used for mapping calving fronts, crevasses, surface structures, sea ice, detection of icebergs, etc. The paper also summarizes both the operational and climate change research by using SAR for sea ice parameter detection. Digital elevation model (DEM) generation and glacier velocity mapping are the two most important applications used in cryosphere using SAR interferometry or interferometric SAR (InSAR). Space-borne InSAR techniques for measuring ice flow velocity and topography have developed rapidly over the last decade. InSAR is capable of measuring ice motion that has radically changed the science of glaciers and ice sheets. Measurement of temperate glacier velocities and surface characteristics by using airborne and space-borne interferometric satellite images have been the significant application in glaciology and cryospheric studies. Space-borne InSAR has contributed to major evolution in many research areas of glaciological study by measuring ice-stream flow velocity, improving understanding of ice-shelf processes, yielding velocity for flux-gate based mass-balance assessment, and mapping flow of mountain glaciers. The present review summarizes the salient development of SAR applications in cryosphere and glaciology.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (40571099)the Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China.
文摘Speckle filtering is an indispensable pre-processing step for applications of polarimetric synthetic aperture radar （POLSAR）, such as terrain classification, target detection, etc. As one of the most typical methods, the polarimetric whitening filter （PWF） can be used to produce a minimum-speckle image by combining the complex elements of the scattering matrix, but polarimetric information is lost after the filtering process. A polarimetric filter based on subspaze decomposition which was proposed by Cu et al specializes in retrieving principle scattering characteristics, but the corresponding mean value of an image after filtering is not kept well. A new filter is proposed for improving the disadvantage based on subspace decomposition. Under the constraint that a weighted combination of the polarimetric SAR images equals to the output of the PWF, the Euclidean distance between an unfiltered parameter vector and a signal space vector is minimized so that noises can be reduced. It is also shown that the proposed method is equivalent to the subspace filter in the case of no constraint. Experimental results with the NASA/JPL airborne polarimetric SAR data demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
