Microwave Remote Sensing / Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)

5.1 SAR application for Geophysical Survey and Environmental Study

Observation of seasonal land surface changes for environmental study. We have obtained SAR data sets (Level 2.1) of JERS-1 in several places including Ulaanbaatar and Sendai. We are basically using “ER Mapper ver.6.0” for SAR data processing.

We have the data for the same places at different season to observe the seasonal change for fundamental understanding of the SAR data. Especially we have interest to interpret the data quantitatively, because we would like to correlate these data directly to the electromagnetic scattering phenomena on the ground surface.

We plan to expand the study area of this study to more wide area in Siberia.

5.2 Ground Truth of SAR with GPR

Fundamental study for global monitoring of permafrost, moisture in soil by SAR.

Ground truth measurement will be carried out in Ulaanbaatar and Yakutuk this August. We will bring our ground penetrating radar (GPR) and TDR moisture measurement equipment for the field study for permafrost. At the same place, we will analyze the JERS-1 SAR data for understanding and correlating the GPR and SAR.

5.3 Interferometoric/Polarimetric Syntehtic Aperture Radar for 3-D Ground Surface Measurement

We are planning a laboratory test of Interferometric SAR system for better understanding of this technology and further applications. For example, we think Interferometory technology will be useful for monitoring small changes of the melted depth of permafrost. In order to verify this idea, we are building up a test Interferometric radar system in our laboratory. The system is consist from two antennas for Tx and Rx which can operate at between1GHz-6GHz. This radar system is capable of acquiring Interferometoric/Polarimetric SAR data and it will be tested in an unecohic chamber.