Lab exercise 8, due right before the class on October 26, 2005
EES5053: Remote Sensing. Earth and Environmental Science, UTSA
http://www.utsa.edu/LRSG/

Student Name: ___________________

 

Microwave Remote Sensing

 Purpose

      In the first part of this lab, you will calculate the range resolution and azimuth resolution for an active microwave radar system. In the second part of the lab, you will read a paper and write a report.

1. Active Microwave Remote Sensing 

A. Range Resolution

1. A SLAR (Side-Looking Airborne Radar) system with a pulse duration, t, of 0.1 × 10-6 seconds is used to obtain images of targets at a depression angle, γ, of 30 degrees.

a. According to the equation discussed in the lecture, the range resolution, Rr, is how many meters?

b. How many meters would Rr be if the pulse duration were 0.05 × 10-6 seconds?

c. How many meters would Rr be if the depression angle were 15 degrees?

2. You have been commissioned by the U.S. Forest Service to conduct a SLAR mission to resolve and count rows of planted pine that are spaced at intervals of 20 meters. The pilot for this mission proposes a flight plan that would image trees at a depression angle of 20 degrees.

a. For a SLAR system with a pulse duration of 0.1 × 10-6 seconds, will the trees be resolved? Explain your answer.

b. Describe two equipment modifications that could be made on the SLAR transmitter to improve range resolution Rr?

B. Azimuth Resolution

3. An X-band (wavelength = 3cm ) real aperature SLAR antenna has a length, D, of 400 cm. For a slant range distance, S , of 40 km , use the equations discussed in lecture to calculate resolution in azimuth direction.

a. How many meters is the azimuth resolution Ra ?

b. What is the maximum slant range, S, at which the pilot can fly the mission and still be able to resolve the trees?
 

4. The range resolution of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) can be calculated as the same way as for real aperature radar. But the calculation for the azimuth resolution is much easier for the the SAR compare with for the real aperature radar.
 

a. If the radar system in question 3 is a SAR system, please calculate the azimuth resolution Ra for the X-band.
b. Does this system can resolve the trees?

 
5. One way to remove speckle noise for SAR imagery is to divide the synthetic aperture length into N segments, each segment is processed independently to form either a intensity or amplitude SAR image. The N images are summed together to form a N-looks SAR image. This process reduce the speckle noise, but degrade the resolution.

 
a. Calculate the resolution for the above X-band image, when number of looks are 4 or 16.

2. Passive Microwave Remote Sensing

In this section you will select any one of three papers from the class website. You will read the paper and understand major contents of the paper (you may not understand all of them, such as a lot of  mathematics, that is fine). You need to write a report (one page or so), including the title of the paper you read, the data been used, the method been used, and the major points or conclusions been resolved. By reading your report, I should be able to judge how much you understand the paper, which is the basis for me to give you a grade.

Reading and understanding a scientific paper is a very important skill for research. I hope by reading and understanding a paper will help you to write your proposal for the class project, and finally to carry out the class project.