Search

In the last two decades, the use of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for remote sensing purposes has significantly developed due to improvements in the quality and the availability of the images. Two powerful SAR techniques, namely, polarimetry and interferometry, have further increased the range of applications of the sensed data. Using polarimetry, geometrical properties and geophysical parameters, such as shape, roughness, texture, and moisture content, can be retrieved with considerable accuracy, while interferometric information may be used to extract vertical information with accuracy less than 1 cm. In this paper, the potential of using joint polarimetry and interferometry techniques in SAR data (PolInSAR) for the purpose of SAR image classification is investigated. To achieve this goal, we extend a covariance symmetry detection framework to the PolInSAR scenario. The proposed approach will be shown to be able to exploit the peculiar structures of the covariance matrices of PolInSAR images to discriminate structures within the image. Results using real-SAR data are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

The availability of accurate estimates of the delay or time of arrival (TOA) of the incoming signals is of paramount importance for the position estimation in passive radars with multiple receivers. This correspondence aims at improving estimation of the delays by multiple detectors exploiting the cross-correlation between the cross-correlation estimates (say cross-cross-correlation) of the received signals. The resulting equation system is formulated as a least squares (LS) minimization problem, whose solution is efficiently found computing the pseudo-inverse of the model matrix. In fact, the cross-cross-correlation implicitly performs a filtering operation on the considered signal, approximating the generalized cross-correlator behavior, without using statistical information about the signal spectra. The proposed method is numerically validated in comparison with classic counterparts and theoretical bounds.

Space-time adaptive processing (STAP) is a well-known and effective method to detect targets, obscured by interference, from airborne radars that works by coherently combining signals from a phased antenna array (spatial domain) with multiple radar pulses (temporal domain). As widely demonstrated, optimum STAP, in the sense of maximizing the output signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR), is a coherent, linear, transversal filter (i.e., tapped delay line), that can be synthesized by a complex-valued weight vector. This paper extends previous work that focused on adaptive spatial-only nulling; it derives the optimum phase-only STAP, namely, the optimal weight vector that maximizes the SINR subject to the constraint it belongs to the $N$ -torus of phase-only complex vectors, where $N$ is the number of spatio-temporal degrees of freedom. Because this problem does not admit a closed-form solution, it is solved numerically using the phase-only conjugate gradient method (CGM). The effectiveness of phase-only STAP is demonstrated using both SINR values and receiving beampattern shape, comparing it with the optimum fully-adapted STAP and the nonadapted beam former responses as well as other possible counterparts. Additionally, several analyses of practical utility also demonstrate the benefits provided by phase-only STAP.

Non-cooperative target location is accomplished by means of multiple passive radar receivers deployed in the region of interest and that detect the delayed replicas of the signal emitted by the target and estimate the time difference of arrival. However, in realistic scenarios, some of the involved sensors could not correctly work if the sensor is victim of intentional/unintentional interference and/or physical damage of the device or its communication link. Thus, procedures for failure detection become of primary interest to discard the measurements related to the out-of-order sensors. The approach proposed in this paper identifies sensors under failure from the analysis of the errors in the equationsystem implemented to estimate the delays. More precisely, we first compute the second and fourth order correlations (namely, cross-correlation and cross-cross-correlation, i.e. the cross-correlation between signals' cross-correlations) of the incoming signals to build up the system of equation. Then, we perform a sequential cancellation of the equationsthat experience the highest errors. A statistical test based on the number of canceled equationsrelated to a specific sensor is used to state whether or not the specific sensor is under failure. Finally, the performance of the entire failure detection architecture is assessed by numerical simulations also in comparison with a heuristic method based on the percentages of canceled equationsand its standard counterparts not performing any outlier screening.

This letter extends the constrained Least Squares (CLS) optimization method developed to coregister multitemporal synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images affected by a joint rotation effect and range/azimuth shifts enforcing the absence of zooming effects. To take advantage of the structural information extracted from the scene, the method starts with a detection stage that identifies extended targets/areas in the images. The selected tie-points allow the CLS problem to be reformulated to find its (initial) solution based on a robust subset of image blocks. Then, the mean square error (MSE) of each equation evaluated from the initial solution allows to implement an iterative cancellation procedure to further skim the CLS equation set. The effectiveness of the proposed procedure is validated on real SAR data in comparison with the standard CLS.

This paper proposes a convolution neural network (CNN) architecture for automatic recognition of signals on the basis of their modulations for Cognitive software defined radio (SDR) applications. It is developed starting from two CNNs specifically designed for this problem and is characterized by having a low number of convolution and fully connected layers sharing also a very low number of filters/units. Moreover, Batch normalization is used to increase learning rate and reduce training time. The reduced complexity together with its low operating time make it compliant with real-time SDR applications. The proposed architecture is validated on the RadioML2016.10a dataset showing interesting results in discriminating both analog and digital modulations under different signal to noise ratio (SNR) regimes.

Recently, multi-sensor localization strategies are gaining attention in the railway scenario. In fact, the current trend is to reduce or remove the physical equipment deployed along the track for positioning purposes and to exploit on-board sensors to realize the same functionalities. Although GNSS is one of the major resources to perform this task, its performances dramatically decrease in presence of sources of local hazards like multipath, shadowing and blockage. For this reason, multi-sensor positioning methods are under study. Among them, those based on the detection of landmarks constituted by georeferenced trackside infrastructure elements like rail signs, and the estimation of the relative position of the train with respect to them are rather promising. Thus, in this paper we focus on the construction of the section of a Rail Digital Map related to these infrastructure elements on the basis of the fusion of the outputs of a stereo video camera and a LIDAR. In particular, the algorithms for object detection, single epoch landmark position estimation and landmark tracking are discussed. Results of the performance assessment based on Monte Carlo simulations are also reported.