Non-intrusive soil carbon content quantification methods using machine learning algorithms:A comparison of microwave and millimeter wave radar sensors

Agricultural and forestry biomass can be converted to biochar through pyrolysis gasification,making it a significant carbon source for soil.Applying biochar to soil is a carbon-negative process that helps combat climate change,sustain soil biodiversity,and regulate water cycling.However,quantifying soil carbon content conventionally is time-consuming,labor-intensive,imprecise,and expensive,making it difficult to accurately measure in-field soil carbon’s effect on storage water and nutrients.To address this challenge,this paper for the first time,reports on extensive lab tests demonstrating non-intrusive methods for sensing soil carbon and related smart biochar applications,such as differentiating between biochar types from various biomass feedstock species,monitoring soil moisture,and biochar water retention capacity using portable microwave and millimeter wave sensors,and machine learning.These methods can be scaled up by deploying the sensor in-field on a mobility platform,either ground or aerial.The paper provides details on the materials,methods,machine learning workflow,and results of our investigations.The significance of this work lays the foundation for assessing carbon-negative technology applications,such as soil carbon content accounting.We validated our quantification method using supervised machine learning algorithms by collecting real soil mixed with known biochar contents in the field.The results show that the millimeter wave sensor achieves high sensing accuracy(up to 100%)with proper classifiers selected and outperforms the microwave sensor by approximately 10%–15%accuracy in sensing soil carbon content.

Wave height measurement in the Taiwan Strait with a portable high frequency surface wave radar

As an important equipment for sea state remote sensing, high frequency surface wave radar （HFSWR） has received more and more attention. The conventional method for wave height inversion is based on the ratio of the integration of the second-order spectral continuum to that of the first-order region, where the strong external noise and the incorrect delineation of the first- and second-order Doppler spectral regions due to spectral aliasing are two major sources of errors in the wave height. To account for these factors, two more indices are introduced to the wave height estimation, i.e., the ratio of the maximum power of the second-or- der continuum to that of the Bragg spectral region （RSCB） and the ratio of the power of the second harmonic peak to that of the Bragg peak （RSHB）. Both indices also have a strong correlation with the underlying wave height. On the basis of all these indices an empirical model is proposed to estimate the wave height. This method has been used in a three-months long experiment of the ocean state measuring and analyzing ra- dar, type S （OSMAR-S）, which is a portable HFSWR with compact cross-loop/monopole receive antennas developed by Wuhan University since 2006. During the experiment in the Taiwan Strait, the significant wave height varied from 0 to 5 m. The significant wave heights estimated by the OSMAR-S correlate well with the data provided by the Oceanweather Inc. for comparison, with a correlation coefficient of 0.74 and a root mean square error （RMSE） of 0.77 m. The proposed method has made an effective improvement to the wave height estimation and thus a further step toward operational use of the OSMAR-S in the wave height extraction.

Vessel fusion tracking with a dual-frequency high-frequency surface wave radar and calibrated by an automatic identification system

High-frequency surface wave radar（HFSWR） and automatic identification system（AIS） are the two most important sensors used for vessel tracking.The HFSWR can be applied to tracking all vessels in a detection area,while the AIS is usually used to verify the information of cooperative vessels.Because of interference from sea clutter,employing single-frequency HFSWR for vessel tracking may obscure vessels located in the blind zones of Bragg peaks.Analyzing changes in the detection frequencies constitutes an effective method for addressing this deficiency.A solution consisting of vessel fusion tracking is proposed using dual-frequency HFSWR data calibrated by the AIS.Since different systematic biases exist between HFSWR frequency measurements and AIS measurements,AIS information is used to estimate and correct the HFSWR systematic biases at each frequency.First,AIS point measurements for cooperative vessels are associated with the HFSWR measurements using a JVC assignment algorithm.From the association results of the cooperative vessels,the systematic biases in the dualfrequency HFSWR data are estimated and corrected.Then,based on the corrected dual-frequency HFSWR data,the vessels are tracked using a dual-frequency fusion joint probabilistic data association（JPDA）-unscented Kalman filter（UKF） algorithm.Experimental results using real-life detection data show that the proposed method is efficient at tracking vessels in real time and can improve the tracking capability and accuracy compared with tracking processes involving single-frequency data.

Surface tidal currents in the open sea area to the east of the Zhoushan Islands measured with high frequency surface wave radar

Based on the quasi-harmonic analysis of 11 d vector ocean currents obtained from two high frequency sur- face wave radars located at Zhujiajian Island and Shengshan Island, the spatial distribution characteristics of surface tidal currents in the open sea area to the east of the Zhoushan Islands of Zhejiang Province, China are studied. The following conclusions are drawn from the analysis： the tidal current pattern in the open sea area to the east of Zhoushan Islands is primarily regular semidiurnal, which is significantly affected by the shallow water constituents. The directions of the major axes of tidal current ellipses of M2 lie approx- imately in the NW-SE direction. With the increasing of distance away from the coast, the directions of the tidal current ellipses gradually shift toward the E-W direction. The tidal currents are mainly reversing cur- rents. The spatial distribution of probable maximum current velocities decreases gradually from northeast to southwest which is basically in accordance with the spatial distribution of measured maximum current velocities. The residual currents near the coast are larger than those far away from the coast. The directions of the residual currents are basically north by east, and the angle to the due north increases gradually with the increasing distance away from the coast. The topography shows a certain impact on the spatial distri- bution of shallow water constituents, the rotation of tidal currents, the probable maximum currents and the residual currents.

Application of ESPRIT in Broad Beam HF Ground Wave Radar Sea Surface Current Mapping

HF surface wave radar system OSMAR2000 is a broad-beam sea-state detecting radar. ESPRIT (Estimation of Signal Parameters via Rotational Invariance Technique) algorithm is proposed to apply in DOA (direction of arrival) determination of sea echoes. The algorithm of ESPRIT is briefly introduced first. Then discussions are made on the technique for application in the OSMAR2000 framework. Numerical simulation results are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of radial current mapping based on this method. The algorithm manifests significant performance and computational advantages compared with that of MUSIC. Data acquired by OSMAR2000 are processed to give radial current map and the synthesized vector currents are compared with the in-situ measurement with traditional means. The results show the validity of ESPRIT application in DOA determination for broad-beam radar. Key words HF ground wave radar - sea surface current - ESPRIT - MUSIC CLC number TN 911.72 - TN 958.95 Foundation item: Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (60201003) and the National High Technology Development 863 Program of China (863-818-01-02)Biography: Liu Dan-hong (1976-), female, Master candidate, research direction: radar signal processing.

FM interference suppression for PRC-CW radar based on adaptive STFT and time-varying filtering

The influence of frequency modulation （FM） interfer- ence on correlation detection performance of the pseudo random code continuous wave （PRC-CW） radar is analyzed. It is found that the correlation output deteriorates greatly when the FM inter- ference power exceeds the anti-jamming limit of the radar. Accord- ing to the fact that the PRC-CW radar echo is a wideband pseudo random signal occupying the whole TF plane, while the FM in- terference only concentrates in a small portion, a new method is proposed based on adaptive short-time Fourier transform （STFT） and time-varying filtering for FM interference suppression. This method filters the received signal by using a binary mask to excise only the portion of the TF plane corrupted by the interference. Two types of interference, linear FM （LFM） and sinusoidal FM （SFM）, under different signal-to-jamming ratio （S JR） are studied. It is shown that the proposed method can effectively suppress the FM interference and improve the performance of target detection.

Range Ambiguity Elimination in a Short-Range FMCW Radar System

Modified implementation architecture for sinusoidal frequency modulation is introduced to extract the range information from the received radar echo. Range ambiguity problem arises because the range is calculated from the estimated phase of the received signal which is wrapped into （0, 2π]. By integrating Doppler frequency shifts, the variation of range can be estimated and used as an auxiliary information to help eliminating the corresponding range ambiguity. The performance of the new technique is evaluated by simulations. The results show that this technique is robust to sever phase noise and can be used effectively for ambiguity elimination of the modified sinusoidal frequency modulated continuous wave radar.

Adaptive digital self-interference cancellation based on fractional order LMS in LFMCW radar

Adaptive digital self-interference cancellation(ADSIC)is a significant method to suppress self-interference and improve the performance of the linear frequency modulated continuous wave(LFMCW)radar.Due to efficient implementation structure,the conventional method based on least mean square(LMS)is widely used,but its performance is not sufficient for LFMCW radar.To achieve a better self-interference cancellation(SIC)result and more optimal radar performance,we present an ADSIC method based on fractional order LMS(FOLMS),which utilizes the multi-path cancellation structure and adaptively updates the weight coefficients of the cancellation system.First,we derive the iterative expression of the weight coefficients by using the fractional order derivative and short-term memory principle.Then,to solve the problem that it is difficult to select the parameters of the proposed method due to the non-stationary characteristics of radar transmitted signals,we construct the performance evaluation model of LFMCW radar,and analyze the relationship between the mean square deviation and the parameters of FOLMS.Finally,the theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the proposed method has a better SIC performance than the conventional methods.

Transmission Properties of Radar Wave through Reentry Plasma Sheath

In this paper, by taking into account the coupling of the ionization of ablation gas and atmosphere, an electrons density distribution model is built. Using this model, the transmission properties of different polarization radar wave through sheath are evaluated on the basis of the transmission matrix theory. Then, we discuss the effects of the electrons density, the added magnetic field, and the radar wave frequency on the transmission properties. As a result of this investigation, greater transmission power could be gained in order to efficiently shorten communication blackout, by reducing the electrons density or choosing proper added magnetic field and the frequency of the radar wave according to the different polarization form of the radar wave.

Scattering of Electromagnetic Waves by Drift Vortex in Plasma

In a quasi-two-dimensional model, the scattering of incident ordinary electromag- netic waves by a dipole-electrostatic drift vortex is studied with first-order Born approximation. The distribution of the scattering cross-section and total cross-section are evaluated analytically in different approximate conditions, and the physical interpretations are discussed. When the wavelength of incident wave is much longer than the vortex radius （kia〈〈1）, it is found that the angle at which the scattering cross-section reaches its maxim depends significantly on the approximation of the parameters of the vortex used. It is also found that the total scattering cross-section has an affinitive relation with the parameters of the plasma, while it is irrelevant to the frequency of the incident wave in a wide range of parameters of the vortex. In a totally different range of parameters when incident wave is in the radar-frequency range （then kia 〈〈 1, the wavelength of incident wave is much shorter than the vortex radius）, the numerical procedure is conducted with computer in order to obtain the distribution and the total expression of the scattering crosssection. Then it is found that the total scattering cross-section in the low frequency range is much larger than that in high frequency range, so the scattering is more effective in the low frequency range than in high frequency range.

Comparative analysis of single-and multiple-frequency thermal wave radar imaging inspection of glass fiber reinforced polymer(GFRP)

Active infrared thermography has gained increasing popularity for nondestructive testing and evaluation in various industrial fields,especially for composite structures.In this regard,thermal wave radar(TWR)imaging is recognized as the next-generation active thermography technology to obtain great resolution and depth range over the inspected objects.A critical aspect concerns the optimal test parameter selection to guarantee reliable quality assurance required for industrial products.In this work,single-and multiple-frequency TWR was investigated in a quantitative manner with the goal of optimizing the detection parameters in terms of probing range and lateral and depth resolution.The effects of test parameters,including sampling frequency,modulation frequency,chirp duration,chirp bandwidth,etc,were investigated in detail through experiments on a glass fiber reinforced polymer specimen with multi-scale diameter-to-depth ratio defects.This paper aims to help yield a better understanding of the physical mechanism behind TWR and propose a workable scheme for testing parameter selection in practical applications.

Estimation of detection threshold in multiple ship target situations with HF ground wave radar

A credible method of calculating the detection threshold is presented for the multiple target situations, which appear frequently in the lower Doppler velocity region during the surveillance of sea with HF ground wave radar. This method defines a whole-peak-outlier elimination （WPOE） criterion, which is based on in-peak-samples correlation of each target echo spectra, to trim off the target signals and abnormal disturbances with great amplitude from the complex spectra. Therefore, cleaned background noise samples are obtained to improve the accuracy and reliability of noise level estimation. When the background noise is nonhomogeneous, the detection samples are limited and often occupied heavily with outliers. In this case, the problem that the detection threshold is overvalued can be solved. In applications on experimental data, it is verified that this method can reduce the miss alarm rate of signal detection effectively in multiple target situations as well as make the adaptability of the detector better.

A Method for Improving Ranging Accuracy of Short-range Millimeter Wave Radar

The range-velocity ambiguity caused by moving target influences on the ranging accuracy of a short-range millimeter wave radar greatly.A new method was presented in this paper to reduce the range-velocity ambiguity and improve the ranging accuracy by estimating parameters of the echo signal with fractional Fourier transform and self-correlation.And,a new quick searching algorithm was given also to increase the calculation speed.Compared to the Chinese remainder theorem method,the proposed method is excellent for its simplicity and reducing the computation complexity.The simulation results show its validity.

Estimation of the Direction of Arrival Using Virtual Matrix Method for HF Ground Wave Radar

According to the characteristic of the echo of highfrequency ground wave radar（HF GWR）, which is one-dimensional narrow band signal, a virtual direction of arrival（DOA） matrix is constructed at first, then the DOA of target evaluation is achieved by the method of resolving equations for two-dimensional DOA matrix. And this method bases on the redundancy information of a linear two-row array of antennae. Both the simulation process and the treatment results of measured data （in the case of low SNR echoes and short data series） are given at the end of this paper. By comparing with GPS data of the targets, the validity and practical applicability of the method in this paper is verified.

Adaptive Radio Frequency Interference Mitigation for HF Surface Wave Radar

The paper analyses the characteristics of radio frequency interference （RFI） in HF surface wave radar （HFSWR） which adopts the linear frequency modulated interrupted continuous wave （FMICW）. RFI will influence all the range cells including all the positive frequency and negative frequency, and the negative frequency range cells contain only the interference information. Based on the above characteristics, we introduce and analyze a new adaptive interference mitigation beamforming algorithm using the negative frequency range cells samples to estimate the interference covariance matrix. Experimental results confirm that this general and robust algorithm can achieve effective RFI suppression using the data recorded by the HFSWR, located near Zhoushan in Zhejiang China.

Parameters of Exterior Ballistic Feature Points Extraction in Radar Measurement Data by EMD

The problem of measuring exterior ballistic feature points is always difficult to solve and it is essentiale on exterior ballistic measurement.By analysis of radar reflection characteristics and non-stationary echo signals of exterior ballistic feature points,the echo data of exterior ballistic feature points is measured by using the continuous wave radar.The parameters of feature points are extracted by the empirical mode decomposition method(EMD)of Hilbert-Huang transform(HHT)spectrum analysis technique.The radar echo signal model and EMD extraction model are established to analyze the exterior ballistic mutation point detection and EMD extraction method of aliasing echo signal.Typical feature point parameters of exterior ballistic in rocket flight tests are carried out and the effectiveness of the method is verified.A new method of measuring the parameters of exterior ballistic feature point is therefore presented.

A Ku and Ka Dual Band Experimental Radar

Due to the good performance of tracking low elevation target as compared to microwave and the superiority in penetrating smoke, dust, fog, and dry snow as compared to infrared, a Ku and Ka dual band experimental radar was designed and developed. This Ku and Ka dual band experimental radar is an arnplitute-comparison monopulse tracking and guiding radar. The constitution and parameters of this radar is described in paragraph 2. Paragraph 3 deals with two experiments for testing the tracking performances against low elevation target, and gives the important results. Both Ku and Ka band have high tracking precision when they track high elevation targets, while Ka band has much better tracking performance than Ku band when they track low elevation targets. Ka band can track a helicopter, whose radar cross section is about 6 square meters, at 40m, 20m, 10m, and even 5m above sea. Ku band can only track the same helicopter at 160m and higher above sea.

Elimination of the impact of vessels on ocean wave height inversion with X-band wave monitoring radar

Directional wave spectra and integrated wave parameters can be derived from X-band radar sea surface images.A vessel on the sea surface has a significant influence on wave parameter inversions that can be seen as intensive backscatter speckles in X-band wave monitoring radar sea surface images.A novel algorithm to eliminate the interference of vessels in ocean wave height inversions from X-band wave monitoring radar is proposed.This algorithm is based on the characteristics of the interference.The principal components(PCs) of a sea surface image sequence are extracted using empirical orthogonal function(EOF)analysis.The standard deviation of the PCs is then used to identify vessel interference within the image sequence.To mitigate the interference,a suppression method based on a frequency domain geometric model is applied.The algorithm framework has been applied to OSMAR-X,a wave monitoring system developed by Wuhan University,based on nautical X-band radar.Several sea surface images captured on vessels by OSMAR-X are processed using the method proposed in this paper.Inversion schemes are validated by comparisons with data from in situ wave buoys.The root-mean-square error between the significant wave heights(SWH) retrieved from original interference radar images and those measured by the buoy is reduced by 0.25 m.The determinations of surface gravity wave parameters,in particular SWH,confirm the applicability of the proposed method.

Estimating significant wave height from SAR imagery based on an SVM regression model

A new method for estimating significant wave height（SWH） from advanced synthetic aperture radar（ASAR） wave mode data based on a support vector machine（SVM） regression model is presented. The model is established based on a nonlinear relationship between σ0, the variance of the normalized SAR image, SAR image spectrum spectral decomposition parameters and ocean wave SWH. The feature parameters of the SAR images are the input parameters of the SVM regression model, and the SWH provided by the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts（ECMWF） is the output parameter. On the basis of ASAR matching data set, a particle swarm optimization（PSO） algorithm is used to optimize the input kernel parameters of the SVM regression model and to establish the SVM model. The SWH estimation results yielded by this model are compared with the ECMWF reanalysis data and the buoy data. The RMSE values of the SWH are 0.34 and 0.48 m, and the correlation coefficient is 0.94 and 0.81, respectively. The results show that the SVM regression model is an effective method for estimating the SWH from the SAR data. The advantage of this model is that SAR data may serve as an independent data source for retrieving the SWH, which can avoid the complicated solution process associated with wave spectra.