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The vital sign measurement systems inside vehicles have taken great or impulse in recent years, and the technologies that have been most welcomed are based on wireless measurements that do not interrupt driving and are imperceptible to the driver. There are disorders in breathing patterns, which include the movement of different regions of the human thorax mainly. In this sense, the objective of this paper is to determine the dimensions of a lens-based antenna system and the pointing angles of the radiation main lobe of the six antenna-elements to measure the elongation of six regions of the human torso and determine breathing patterns. The pointing angle is controlled by the position of the antenna behind the lens, and the beamwidth of the lobe depends on the directivity achieved by the antenna. An electronic system to simulate torso elongation is also presented to calibrate and test the sensitivity of the system., This work was supported by the Spanish “Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnologia” (CICYT) under projects PID2019-107885GB-C31 and MDM2016-O6OO; Catalan Research Group 2017 SGR 219; and ”Secretaría Nacional de Educación Superior, Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación” (SENESCYT) from the Ecuadorian government., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author's final draft)

Electromagnetic (EM) waves propagate through the atmosphere where they are refracted depending on the composition of the atmosphere. This refraction highly influences the propagation of the EM-waves. Certain atmospheric conditions can cause EM-waves to get trapped within a duct. In these ducts blind zones may occur, where there is no EM-wave coverage. These blind zones show up in the results of ray tracing simulations. However, these codes provide no insight into the dependence of the blind zone on the atmospheric conditions and the transmitter height. In this research analytical expressions are derived for the range of these blind zones. The expressions have been verified by ray trace simulations for several transmitter heights under ducting conditions. Results show that the blind zone range can be accurately predicted., Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public., Microwave Sensing, Signals & Systems

This paper studies the detection performance of a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) multifunction radio frequency (MFRF) system, which simultaneously supports radar, communication, and jamming. We show that the detection performance of the MIMO MFRF system improves as the transmit signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) increases. To analyze the achievable SINR of the system, we formulate an SINR maximization problem under the communication and jamming functionality constraint as well as a transmit energy constraint. We derive a closed-form solution of this optimization problem for energy-constrained waveforms and present a detailed analysis of the achievable SINR. Moreover, we analyze the SINR for systems transmitting constant-modulus waveforms, which are often used in practice. We propose an efficient constant-modulus waveform design algorithm to maximize the SINR. Numerical results demonstrate the capability of a MIMO array to provide multiple functions, and also show the tradeoff between radar detection and the communication/jamming functionality.

The integration of wireless sensors into the automotive industry is making vehicles increasingly safe and autonomous. At present, vehicles are equipped with external sensors that facilitate maneuverability and braking and internal sensors that detect presence, seat belt state, and occupant vital signs. Early detection of dysfunctional breathing patterns can reduce the risk of accidents caused by drowsiness or fatigue. In this regard, this work presents an MIMO FMCW Radar System able to distinguish dysfunctional breathing patterns from human torso motion. The torso has been divided into six regions, and the amplitude of the elongation and the frequency of motion of each region have been measured during breathing. An elongation map is then constructed in order to graphically show the dysfunctional breathing patterns. The signal processing includes a peak search algorithm to detect elongation amplitude and a bandpass frequency filter to minimize dc components, random driver motion, and vehicle vibration. A torso elongation emulator phantom has been assembled with materials of skin-like relative permittivity and dc motors for calibration and validation of basic breathing patterns. Finally, the signal of the system is compared with that of a commercial respiration belt, and then the system is tested by performing measurements on people. The MIMO radar system is able to measure, differentiate, and classify patterns associated with dysfunctional breathing such as hyperventilation syndrome and thoracic dominant breathing., This work was supported in part by the Spanish “Comision Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnologia” (CICYT) under Project PID2019-107885GB-C31 and Project MDM2016- 0600, in part by the Catalan Research Group under Grant 2017 SGR 219, and in part by the “Secretaría Nacional de Educación Superior, Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación” (SENESCYT) from the Ecuadorian Government, Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author's final draft)

In this study, we analyzed low-frequency drone-borne ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and full-wave inversion for soil electrical conductivity mapping. Indeed, in the lowest GPR frequency ranges, the soil surface reflexion coefficient depends more on the soil electrical conductivity than on its permittivity. Numerical experiments were conducted within the frequency range 15–45 MHz to analyze parameter sensitivities, the well-posedness of the inverse problem as well as the depth of sensitivity. The results show that the soil surface reflexion is significantly more sensitive to the soil electrical conductivity than the soil permittivity. Therefore, the conductivity can be retrieved using full-wave inversion within this frequency range, with a characterization depth varying from 0.5 to 1 m, depending on the soil properties. Yet, the permittivity also affects the results and should be accounted for in the inversion strategy. Field measurements were performed using low-frequency drone-borne radar with a 5-m half-wave dipole antenna, and electromagnetic induction (EMI) measurements with different depth sensitivities were conducted for comparison. Kriging interpolation was used to get maps from measurement points. The soil conductivity maps obtained by the proposed GPR and EMI are compliant in terms of absolute values and spatial patterns. This study demonstrated the capacity of low-frequency drone-borne GPR for fast, field-scale soil electrical conductivity mapping.

This work considers a collocated radar scenario where a probing signal is emitted toward the targets of interest and records the received echoes. Estimating the relative delay-Doppler shifts of the targets allows determining their relative locations and velocities. However, the received radar measurements are often affected by impulsive non-Gaussian noise which makes a few measurements partially corrupted. While demixing radar signal and impulsive noise is challenging in general by traditional subspace-based methods, atomic norm minimization (ANM) has been recently developed to perform this task in a much more efficient manner. Nonetheless, the ANM cannot identify close delay-Doppler pairs and also requires many measurements. Here, we propose a smoothed l(0) atomic optimization problem encouraging both the sparse features of the targets and the impulsive noise. We design a majorization-minimization algorithm that converges to the solution of the proposed non-convex problem using alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). Simulations results verify the superior accuracy of our proposed algorithm even for very close delay-Doppler pairs in comparison to ANM with around 40 dB improvement., QC 20221202

Optimal allocation of shared resources is key to deliver the promise of jointly operating radar and communications systems. In this paper, unlike prior works which examine synergistic access to resources in colocated joint radar-communications or among identical systems, we investigate this problem for a distributed system comprising heterogeneous radars and multitier communications. In particular, we focus on resource allocation in the context of multi-target tracking (MTT) while maintaining stable communications connections. By simultaneously allocating the available power, dwell time and shared bandwidth, we improve the MTT performance under a Bayesian tracking framework and guarantee the communications throughput. Our alternating allocation of heterogeneous resources (ANCHOR) approach solves the resulting non-convex problem based on the alternating optimization method that monotonically improves the Bayesian Cramér-Rao bound. Numerical experiments demonstrate that ANCHOR significantly improves the tracking error over two baseline allocations and stability under different target scenarios and radar-communications network distributions., QC 20220525

For the first time identification of human individuals using micro-Doppler (m-D) features measured at X-band has been demonstrated. Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNNs) have been used to perform classification. Inspection and visualization of the classification results were performed using Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection (UMAP). Classification accuracy of above 93.5% is obtained for a population of 22 subjects. The results show that human identification on a specific population based on X-band m-D measurements can be performed reliably using a DCNN., Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public., Microwave Sensing, Signals & Systems

Target decomposition methods for polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) data aim at explaining the scattering information. In this regard, several conventional model-based methods use scattering power components to analyze polarimetric SAR data. However, the typical hierarchical process to enumerate power components uses various branching conditions, leading to several limitations. This study uses the 3D Barakat degree of polarization (DoP) to obtain the scattered wave polarization state. We employ the DoP to obtain the even bounce, odd-bounce, and diffuse scattering power components. Besides, we propose a measure of target scattering asymmetry, which is subsequently utilized to obtain the helicity power. All the power components in our approach are roll-invariant and non-negative, and the decomposition preserves the total power. We utilized C-band full polarimetric RADARSAT-2 data to show the effectiveness of the proposed decomposition. © 2021 IEEE., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author's final draft)

The attenuation of microwave emissions through the canopy is quantified by the vegetation optical depth (VOD), which is related to the amount of water, the biomass and the structure of vegetation. To provide microwave-derived plant water estimates, one must account for biomass/structure contributions in order to extract the water component from the VOD. This study uses Aquarius scatterometer data to build an L-band global seasonality of vegetation volume fraction (d), representative of biomass/structure dynamics. The dynamic range of d is adapted for its application in a gravimetric moisture (Mg) retrieval model. Results show that d ranging from 0 to 3.35.10- 4 is needed for modelling physically reasonable Mg values. The global average of d shows consistent spatial patterns across vegetation distributions, and d seasonality is coherent with the phenology of the studied vegetation types. These findings enable the separation of information on vegetation water and biomass/structure inherent within VOD., This work was supported by “la Caixa” Foundation (ID 100010434), under agreement LCF /PR/MIT19/51840001 (MIT -Spain Seed Fund), and by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF, EU) through projects ESP2017-89463-C3-3-R, RTI2018-096765-A-100, CAS19/00264 and MDM-2016-0600. Also, the authors are grateful to MIT for supporting this research with the MIT-Germany Seed Fund (D. Entekhabi, T. Jagdhuber)., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

SAR based offset tracking (OT) is an efficient tool for ground deformation observation, and signal to noise ratio (SNR) is its common error indicator. However, ground feature variations often weaken the accuracy of OT. In addition, SNR shows the signal reliability instead of result accuracy. Based on amplitude selection, cubic spline interpolation and double offset detecting, an improved OT method has been proposed in this paper. Subsidence caused by mining and GPS data have been employed to evaluate the performance of this scheme with TerraSAR-X data. The results indicate that patch like (PL) and cross hair(CH) are reduced efficiently, and the error estimated by the proposed method has a higher correlation with real error than SNR in the mountainous area., This research work has been supported by the China Scholarship Council (CSC NO. 201806420035), by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (MINECO), the State Research Agency (AEI) and the European Funds for Regional Development (EFRD) under project TEC2017- 85244-C2-1-P. CommSensLab, which is Unidad de Excelencia Maria de Maeztu MDM-2016-0600 financed by the Agencia Estatal de Investigacion, ´ Spain. TerraSAR-X images have been provided by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in the framework of Project GEO0389 of the TerraSAR-X scientific program., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author's final draft)

In this article, we present a multipolarimetric estimation approach for two model-based vegetation structure parameters (shape A and orientation distribution ψ of the main canopy elements). The approach is based on a reduced observation set of three incoherent (no phase information) polarimetric backscatter intensities (|S HH | 2 , |S HV | 2 , and |S VV | 2 ) combined with a two-parameter (A P and ψ) discrete scatterer model of vegetation. The objective is to understand whether this confined set of observations contains enough information to estimate the two vegetation structure parameters from the L-band radar signals. In order to disentangle soil and vegetation scattering influences on these signals and ultimately perform a vegetation only retrieval of vegetation shape A and orientation distribution ψ, we use the subpixel spatial heterogeneity expressed by the covariation of co- and cross-polarized backscatter Γ PP-PQ of the neighboring cells and assume it is indicative for the amount of a vegetation-only co-to-cross-polarized backscatter ratio μ PP-PQ . The ratio-based retrieval approach enables a relative (no absolute backscatter) estimation of the vegetation structure parameters which is more robust compared to retrievals with absolute terms. The application of the developed algorithm on global L-band Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) radar data acquired from April to July 2015 indicates the potential and limitations of estimating these two parameters when no fully polarimetric data are available. A focus study on six different regions of interest, spanning land cover from barren land to tropical rainforest, shows a steady increase in orientation distribution toward randomly oriented volumes and a continuous decrease in shape arriving at dipoles for tropical vegetation. A comparison with independent data sets of vegetation height and above-ground biomass confirms this consistent and meaningful retrieval of A P and ψ. The retrieved shapes and orientation distr, This work was supported with the MIT-Germany Seed Fund “Global Water Cycle and Environmental Monitoring using Active and Passive Satellite-based Microwave Instruments” and with the MIT-Belgium UCL Seed Fund “Early Detection of Plant Water Stress Using Remote Sensing”. C. Montzka is supported by the European Commission Horizon 2020 Program that funded the ERA-PLANET/GEOEssential (Grant Agreement no. 689443) project. M. Piles received partial funding through project RTI2018-096765-A-100 (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE)., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author's final draft)

For the first time identification of human individuals using micro-Doppler (m-D) features measured at X-band has been demonstrated. Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNNs) have been used to perform classification. Inspection and visualization of the classification results were performed using Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection (UMAP). Classification accuracy of above 93.5% is obtained for a population of 22 subjects. The results show that human identification on a specific population based on X-band m-D measurements can be performed reliably using a DCNN., Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public., Microwave Sensing, Signals & Systems

Attenuation from clouds and precipitation hinders the use of Ka-band in SARs, radar altimeters and in satellite link communications. The NASA-JAXA Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, with its core satellite payload including a dual-frequency (13.6 and 35.5 GHz) radar and a multifrequency passive microwave radiometer, offers an unprecedented opportunity for better quantifying such attenuation effects. Based on four years of GPM products, this article presents a global climatology of Ka-band attenuation caused by clouds and precipitation and analyses the impact of the precipitation diurnal cycle. As expected, regions of high attenuation mirror precipitation patterns. Clouds and precipitation cause two-way attenuation at 35.5 GHz in excess of 3 dB about 1.5% of the time in the regions below 65$°, peaking at as much as 10% in the tropical rain belt and the South Pacific Convergence Zone and at circa 5% along the storm tracks of the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Confirming previous findings, the diurnal cycle is particularly strong over the land and during the summer period; while over the ocean, the diurnal cycle is generally weaker some coherent features emerge in the tropical oceans and in the northern hemisphere. Results are useful for estimating data loss from (sun-synchronous) satellite adopting active instruments/links at a frequency close to 35 GHz.

This work presents a leaky wave antenna at W band with glide-symmetric protrusions that enhance the scanning ratio of previous works. Also, a conventional leaky wave antenna is designed for comparing the results in terms of required bandwidth and steering range. Both prototypes are based on gap waveguide technology to prevent the leakage due to air gaps between layers. In order to reduce the manufacturing cost, the designs are aimed to 3D-printing. A Taylor amplitude modulation is conducted in the two cases to reduce side lobe levels. The glide-symmetric leaky wave antenna provides a variation of the steering angle from 12.14 degrees to 50.84 degrees in a band from 74.2 GHz to 79.8 GHz. The scanning ratio compared with the simple leaky wave antenna is enhanced by a factor of 6.41. This rapid variation of the steering angle in a narrow band (7%) is of interest for automotive radars., QC 20201123

Attenuation from clouds and precipitation hinders the use of Ka-band in SARs, radar altimeters and in satellite link communications. The NASA-JAXA Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, with its core satellite payload including a dual-frequency (13.6 and 35.5 GHz) radar and a multifrequency passive microwave radiometer, offers an unprecedented opportunity for better quantifying such attenuation effects. Based on four years of GPM products, this article presents a global climatology of Ka-band attenuation caused by clouds and precipitation and analyses the impact of the precipitation diurnal cycle. As expected, regions of high attenuation mirror precipitation patterns. Clouds and precipitation cause two-way attenuation at 35.5 GHz in excess of 3 dB about 1.5% of the time in the regions below 65$°, peaking at as much as 10% in the tropical rain belt and the South Pacific Convergence Zone and at circa 5% along the storm tracks of the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Confirming previous findings, the diurnal cycle is particularly strong over the land and during the summer period; while over the ocean, the diurnal cycle is generally weaker some coherent features emerge in the tropical oceans and in the northern hemisphere. Results are useful for estimating data loss from (sun-synchronous) satellite adopting active instruments/links at a frequency close to 35 GHz.

Attenuation from clouds and precipitation hinders the use of Ka-band in SARs, radar altimeters and in satellite link communications. The NASA-JAXA Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, with its core satellite payload including a dual-frequency (13.6 and 35.5 GHz) radar and a multifrequency passive microwave radiometer, offers an unprecedented opportunity for better quantifying such attenuation effects. Based on four years of GPM products, this article presents a global climatology of Ka-band attenuation caused by clouds and precipitation and analyses the impact of the precipitation diurnal cycle. As expected, regions of high attenuation mirror precipitation patterns. Clouds and precipitation cause two-way attenuation at 35.5 GHz in excess of 3 dB about 1.5% of the time in the regions below 65$°, peaking at as much as 10% in the tropical rain belt and the South Pacific Convergence Zone and at circa 5% along the storm tracks of the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Confirming previous findings, the diurnal cycle is particularly strong over the land and during the summer period; while over the ocean, the diurnal cycle is generally weaker some coherent features emerge in the tropical oceans and in the northern hemisphere. Results are useful for estimating data loss from (sun-synchronous) satellite adopting active instruments/links at a frequency close to 35 GHz.

In the last few years there has been an increased interest towards convergence of communication and sensing functions in the future networks, in order to provide high-datarate wireless and mobile services. In particular, the co-existence and joint operation of radar and communication (comm) systems has emerged as a key research area. In this paper we study the performance of a time-sharing joint radar-comm network and propose approximation methods to obtain two key performance metrics, namely the radar range and comm success probability. We consider a set of radar-communication devices following a homogeneous Poisson point process. Each device works as a pulsed radar and a comm node in turn over time. The analytical results, which we verify via simulations, give important insights on how to trade between radar update rate, comm packet length and network performance., QC 20210903

© 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works., Speckle noise and decorrelation can hamper the application and interpretation of PolSAR images. In this paper, a new adaptive multitemporal Pol(DIn)SAR filtering and phase optimization algorithm is proposed to address these limitations. This algorithm first categorizes and adaptively filters permanent scatterer (PS) and distributed scatterer (DS) pixels according to their polarimetric scattering mechanisms [i.e., the scattering-mechanism-based filtering (SMF)]. Then, two different polarimetric DInSAR (POLDInSAR) phase OPTimization methods are applied separately on the filtered PS and DS pixels (i.e., POLOPT). Finally, an inclusive pixel selection approach is used to identify high-quality pixels for ground deformation estimation. Thirty-one full-polarization Radarsat-2 SAR images over Barcelona (Spain) and 31 dual-polarization TerraSAR-X images over Murcia (Spain) have been used to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. The PolSAR filtering results show that the speckle of PolSAR images has been well reduced with the preservation of details by the proposed SMF. The obtained ground deformation monitoring results have shown significant improvements, about ×7.2 (the full-polarization case) and ×3.8 (the dual-polarization case) with respect to the classical full-resolution single-pol amplitude dispersion method, on the valid pixels' densities. The excellent PolSAR filtering and ground deformation monitoring results achieved by the adaptive Pol(DIn)SAR filtering and phase optimization algorithm (i.e., the SMF-POLOPT) have validated the effectiveness of this proposed scheme., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author's final draft)

© 2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works, To address the growing demand for accurate high-resolution ocean wind forcing from the ocean modeling community, we develop a new forcing product, ERA*, by means of a geolocated scatterometer-based correction applied to the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) reanalysis or ERA-interim (hereafter referred to as ERAi). This method successfully corrects for local wind vector biases present in the ERAi output globally. Several configurations of the ERA* are tested using complementary scatterometer data [advanced scatterometer (ASCAT)-A/B and oceansat-2 scatterometer (OSCAT)] accumulated over different temporal windows, verified against independent scatterometer data [HY-2A scatterometer (HSCAT)], and evaluated through spectral analysis to assess the geophysical consistency of the new stress equivalent wind fields (U10S). Due to the high quality of the scatterometer U10S, ERA* contains some of the physical processes missing or misrepresented in ERAi. Although the method is highly dependent on sampling, it shows potential, notably in the tropics. Short temporal windows are preferred, to avoid oversmoothing of the U10S fields. Thus, corrections based on increased scatterometer sampling (use of multiple scatterometers) are required to capture the detailed forcing errors. When verified against HSCAT, the ERA* configurations based on multiple scatterometers reduce the vector root-mean-square difference about 10% with respect to that of ERAi. ERA* also shows a significant increase in small-scale true wind variability, observed in the U10S spectral slopes. In particular, the ERA* spectral slopes consistently lay between those of HSCAT and ERAi, but closer to HSCAT, suggesting that ERA* effectively adds spatial scales of about 50 km, substantially smaller than those resolved by global numerical weather prediction (NWP) output over the open ocean (about 150 km)., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author's final draft)

Spaceborne constellations composed by several heterogeneous platforms are an actual solution to undertake Earth Observation missions. However, designing such missions present problems due to the heterogeneity and the multiple design levels that must be considered. In this paper, a high-level methodology to address the design of a spaceborne Earth Observation constellation is outlined. In addition to the framework, this document presents an application of this methodology to a specific use-case, the Agriculture Hydric Stress for a worldwide coverage, and describes its results., The framework and study presented in this paper was carried out in the frame of the ONION project, funded by the EU’s H2020 program, coordinated by Thales Alenia Space France. This project has been sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, "Sensing with Pioneering Opportunistic Techniques", grant RTI2018-099008-B-C21 and by "CommSensLab" Excellence Research Unit Maria de Maeztu (MINECO grant MDM-2016-0600), and by ICREA Acadèmia award from the Generalitat de Catalunya, Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

Technological developments in low-power mmW radar allow the measurement of deformations in the order of few micrometers and monitoring dynamic processes like structural vibration. This paper presents a fast acquisition FMCW radar operating at 94 GHz and recent experimental results of remote observation of micrometric vibration motion for bridge structural health monitoring. The presented approach offers cost reduction and applicability advantages compared to conventional techniques., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

Multilooking is an effective speckle reduction tool for InSAR images. However, it has some limitations. Based on the De-specKS and NL-SAR algorithms, an adaptive multilooking scheme for multi-temporal InSAR data has been proposed in this paper. Simulated and real SAR data sets have been employed to evaluate the performance of this scheme. The results show that, by taking advantages of DespecKS and NL-SAR, the proposed scheme presents better detail preservation and speckle noise reduction performances comparing with these two advanced and classical multilooking algorithms., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works., Mitigating the atmospheric phase delay is one of the largest challenges faced by the differential synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferometry community. Recently, many publications have studied correcting the stratified tropospheric phase delay by assuming a linear model between them and the topography. However, most of these studies have not considered the effect of turbulent atmospheric artifacts when adjusting the linear model to data. In this paper, we present an improved technique that minimizes the influence of the turbulent atmosphere in the model adjustment. In the proposed algorithm, the model is adjusted to the phase differences of pixels instead of using the unwrapped phase of each pixel. In addition, the different phase differences are weighted as a function of its atmospheric phase screen covariance estimated from an empirical variogram to reduce, in the model adjustment, the impact of pixel pairs with a significant turbulent atmosphere. The good performance of the proposed method has been validated with both the simulated and real Sentinel-1A SAR data in the mountainous area of Tenerife island, Spain., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author's final draft)

©2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works., An assessment of the improvement in the Direction of Arrival (DoA) measurements in automotive radar sensor by joint calibration of the radar sensor plus the radome is presented. Nowadays, radar sensors are calibrated before the radome-emblem assembly. This makes radar sensors more vulnerable to the errors induced by the radome-emblems. This new approach is based on the idea of calibrating the radar sensor with the radome to improve the determination of the Direction of Arrival (DoA) and consequently reduce the angle error., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

This is a postprint (author final draft) version of article that has been accepted for publication. A fully version can be found at: https://doi.org/10.1109/TGRS.2018.2851064 © 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works., Among the different techniques available for measuring the atmospheric water vapor content, Raman lidars stand out as accurate instruments providing detailed profiles with high temporal and altitude resolution. Their principle is based on obtaining the range-resolved ratio of the lidar signals corresponding to Raman returns from water vapor and nitrogen molecules, which is proportional to the water vapor mixing ratio. To do this, it is necessary to determine a calibration factor, specific of each lidar instrument. A method for obtaining this parameter, based on zenith measurements of diffuse sunlight, on Raman scattering models and on simulations, using a radiative transfer model, to estimate sky radiances at the wavelengths of interest, has been applied to the lidar system of Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC; Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain). A set of calibrations, performed between 2016 and 2017, has permitted assessing the calibration procedure and analyzing the stability of the calibration factor in the UPC instrument. Results show that although the calibration factor can remain stable for long periods of time, it can suffer sudden variations that make indispensable to implement a convenient and reliable procedure to perform regular calibrations. We show that the method, which can be applied to any lidar with water vapor and nitrogen Raman channels, can completely dispense with radiosonde data. The calibration method is validated by comparison with simultaneous radiosonde water vapor measurements. Limitations of radiosondes for validating--and eventually calibrating--water vapor Raman lidars have been revealed., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author's final draft)

Differential Interferometry SAR (DInSAR) is an advanced technique to retrieve ground deformation in the geoscience community. Atmospheric Phase Screen (APS) is one of the largest challenges limiting the application of DInSAR especially in mountainous areas. In this paper we propose an approach based on an empirical linear model for compensating stratified atmospheric phase delay in differential interferograms. Compared with conventional empirical linear model, the influence of turbulent APS is taken into consideration in our work. With this, the modelled stratified APS is more accurate. We test our algorithm using Envisat dataset and Sentinel dataset over Tenerife island (Spain). The performance of the approach is compared with Global Atmospheric Models (GAMs)., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

One of the main applications of SAR interferometry is the monitoring of hazard risks related with urban subsidence and landslide instabilities. The different sensors available offer different carrier frequencies, image swaths and resolutions. Depending on the extension of the area and phenomena to monitor, one particular mode can be more suitable than others. In this paper the benefits of high-resolution X-band for landslide monitoring is addressed. The selected mode is the experimental Staring-Spotlight of TerraSAR/TanDEM-X and the area under study the landslide of El Forn de Canillo (Andorra) that is perfectly oriented for orbital DInSAR processing. The paper demonstrates the benefits of high resolution data and the processing challenges that have to be addressed., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

The impact of Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) is a very serious problem for spaceborne microwave radiometry. Many Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS) images show serious contamination by the RFI. SMOS is even more impacted by the RFI than real aperture case because the grating lobes are usually higher in Synthetic Aperture Interferometric Radiometer (SAIR) compared to real aperture one. RFI effects should properly be mitigated or filtered out to retrieve the geophysical parameters from SMOS measurements. This work presents a feasibility study of RFI mitigation/filtering for SAIRs. Instead of dealing with brightness temperature image directly, RFI filtering of the subspace of covariance matrix is introduced., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

The paper analyzes the problem of achieving a coherent operation in Geostationary SAR (GEOSAR) missions intended for continuous monitoring of land surfaces. In contrast to LEOSAR missions, GEOSAR uses very long SAR integration times (from minutes to hours). Accordingly phase errors due to orbit perturbations, radar master oscillator drift, atmosphere propagation and other sources must be conveniently compensated during SAR processing to avoid image defocusing. A network of Active Radar Calibrators (ARC) distributed on the observed scene is proposed, providing echo envelope and phase observations before Synthetic Aperture Processing. In this way the radar antenna phase center trajectory and other phase error sources can be continuously tracked and compensated using a pyramidal sub-aperture processing approach., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

The design and performance evaluation of an inhomogeneous LTCC-based dielectric flat lens at 94 GHz is presented. A previously introduced dielectric flat lens design with its effective permittivity (r) circularly distributed in a set of six discrete concentric rings is modeled and analyzed for a practical LTCC technology fabrication. The focusing capabilities of this lens prototype are numerically estimated and practically tested at 94 GHz, in order to evaluate its performance for automotive radar applications, passive imaging systems, or communication systems at this frequency, in which the beam-scanning and high-gain beams are desirable. Our numerical results indicate that we are able to obtain up to 21 dB of broadside gain and beam-steering capabilities from -52° to 52° with around 13.5 dB gain. Promising preliminary measurements at 94 GHz show that with the proposed LTCC-based flat lens antenna solution we can achieve beam-steering capabilities from -45 to +45° without appreciable pattern distortion., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

In this paper, the use of the l2-norm, or Span, of the scattering vectors is suggested for texture analysis of polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data, with the benefits that we need neither an analysis of the polarimetric channels separately nor a filtering of the data to analyze the statistics. Based on the product model, the distribution of the l2-norm is studied. Closed expressions of the probability density functions under the assumptions of several texture distributions are provided. To utilize the statistical properties of the l2-norm, quantities including normalized moments and log-cumulants are derived, along with corresponding estimators and estimation variances. Results on both simulated and real SAR data show that the use of statistics based on the l2-norm brings advantages in several aspects with respect to the normalized intensity moments and matrix variate log-cumulants., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

This paper addresses two graphical processing approaches for computation of edge scattering with Physical Theory of Diffraction (PTD) high-frequency approximation. One is based on processing only a bitmap containing an image of the radar target, while the other uses a bitmap graphical processing algorithm to identify illuminated and shadowed facet mesh vertices, published in 2014, and then computes PTD diffraction coefficients for illuminated edges in the conventional way. The first approach is much faster for models containing a very large number of facets, but introduces pixel discretization noise, that can be alleviated by using larger bitmaps., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

The Advanced Radar Geosynchronous Observation System is proposed to be a multiple-input–multiple-output synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system hosted on a swarm of minisatellites in quasi-geostationary orbits. The system is made of N iso-frequency sensors, each of them transmitting and receiving the signals. The system would combine the continuous imaging capabilities of a geostationary SAR, gaining a factor N^{2} in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The real aperture would be achievable in \sim 40 min, enabling applications so far unseen, such as monitoring fast deformations, landslides, and other applications for emergency and security. Still, the SNR of the long acquisition time would be conserved. The optimal design of the swarm is addressed, in order to trade resolution, coverage, and revisit time, Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author’s final draft)

The paper evaluates the effects of Atmospheric Phase Screen on focused Geosynchronous SAR data. We derive theoretical models for the resolution, the interferometric de-correlation and the induced clutter in presence of an APS, whose joint time and space power spectrum is modeled as an extension of the Kolmogorov power law. Finally we provide some statistics gathered from a GB RADAR experiment., Postprint (published version)

In this paper, the impact of the internal clutter motion in GEOSAR acquisitions is analyzed. A nearly zero inclination with low eccentricity geosynchronous orbit is considered and, therefore, long integration, in order of 20-30 min (for 1-2 Km resolution) or even hours (for tenths of meters resolution), is required in order to reach the desired synthetic aperture length and the required along-track resolution. Moderate transmitted powers and antenna sizes are considered in the analysis. The power link budget of a long integration GEOSAR acquisition is presented and the limitations imposed by the clutter decorrelation are studied. The minimum target RCS to assure the correct performance of the system under clutter interference scenarios is evaluated. Finally, experimental data from Ground Based SAR X-band acquisitions will be used to validate the Billingsley model in long integration acquisitions, Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

Revisiting time constitutes a key constraint for continuous monitoring activities based on space- and airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) acquisitions. Conversely, the employment of terrestrial platforms overcomes this limitation and makes it possible to perform time-continuous observations of small space-scale phenomena. New research lines of SAR dealing with the backscattering evolution of different types of scenarios become hence possible through the analysis of ground-based SAR (gbSAR) data collections. The Remote Sensing Laboratory of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya drove a one-year measurements campaign in the village of Sallent, northeastern Spain, using its X-Band gbSAR sensor. The field experiment aimed at studying the subsidence phenomenon induced by the salt mining activity carried out in this area during the past decades. In this paper, the polarimetric behavior of an urban environment is investigated at different time scales. After a brief description of the test site and the measurement campaign, the analysis is focused on the stability on man-made structures at different time scales. PolSAR data monthly acquired from June 2006 to July 2007 are employed to stress the presence of nonstationary backscattering processes within the urban scene and the effect they have on differential phase information. Then, a filtering procedure aiming at reducing backscattering randomness in one-day and long-term data collections is then put forward. The improvements provided by the proposed technique are assessed using a new polarimetric descriptor, the time entropy. In the end, the importance of preserving the interferometric phase information from nonstationary backscattering contaminations using fully polarimetric data is discussed, Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

The final radiofrequency power amplifier (PA) of a radar transmitter module is a large factor in system efficiency. Typical radar transmitter signals are frequency-modulated with constant-amplitude pulse envelopes in order to optimize efficiency, resulting in spectral broadening and power radiated outside of the radar frequency band. This paper demonstrates a PA with a dynamic power supply which enables high efficiency while reducing the spectral emissions. The resonant pulse-shaping power supply generates a raised-cosine pulse envelope waveform with efficiency greater than 90% and peak envelope power around 6 W. Measured results with a 2.14-GHz GaN power amplifier with an efficiency of 76% at peak power demonstrate over 67% transmitter efficiency., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

This paper presents an initial analysis of the possibilities for velocity and acceleration m easurement with the Bi- Directional SAR imaging mode (BiDi). It comprises single satellite single path acquisitions as well as a constellation of two satellites. The translati onal velocity components into azimuth and range directions are simulated. A BiDi ap- proach for measuring the azimuth velocity from one satellite with one receiving channel is proposed. Image examples acquired with the TerraSAR-X (TSX) and TanDEM-X (TDX) satellites show velocity and acceleration effects on ships and the proposed BiDi ve locity approach is verified. Interferometric fringes were observed on anchoring ships. A first approach into the understanding of rotational effects was achieved by simulation of rotational fringes., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

In this paper we discuss a preliminary design for a constellation of geosynchronous (GEO) Synthetic Aperture Radars (SAR). The key design concept is to employ one or more pairs of closely-spaced twin receivers flown onboard GEO minisatellites moving with a velocity of few meters per second with respect to the Earth’s surface, so as to form a synthetic aperture on the order of few tenths of kilometers twice a day. The employement of closely-spaced receivers would enable the estimation of the temporal gradient of the tropospheric delay via along track Interferometry, resulting in the possibility to coherently integrate the signal over an aperture time on the order of hours. As a result an area as wide as one thousand kilometers could be imaged while providing: i) continuous temporal coverage at coarse resolution (hundreds of meters); ii) high resolution (few meters) imaging and interferometric capabilities two or more times a day by integrating the signal over few hours, thus ensuring high SNR performance (for stable targets) with a transmitted power com- parable to currently operated spaceborne SARs., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

This paper presents an evaluation of a post-Doppler spacetime adaptive Processing (STAP) technique for non-uniformly displaced phase center receivers synthetic aperture radar (SAR). Both theoretical and simulation analysis are carried out in order to prove the ground moving target indication (GMTI) capabilities for specific non-uniformly spaced multichannel configurations on-board a single satellite platform. Simulated SAR data in the maritime scenario show improved performance, specially for small and slow targets, compared to current SAR missions, equipped with just two channels., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

In this paper, a high integration gain GEOSAR mission for Earth imaging is presented. The spatial-temporal atmospheric decorrelation issues of a long integration time GEOSAR mission must be carefully studied. The feasibility of a GEOSAR mission for Atmospheric Phase Screen retrieval purposes is studied. The raw data received from several hours of acquisition is divided into sub-acquisitions with integration time on the order of the APS decorrelation time. From each sub-matrix, a low-resolution but enough to sample the spatial variations of the atmospheric map is obtained. The simulated results of the APS retrieval from a GEOSAR acquisition are shown at the end of this paper., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

[EN] We study the phase and amplitude stability of RF signals, generated at different frequencies by heterodyning pairs of modes from the optical spectrum of an active mode-locked laser, and we focus on the dependence of noise on the RF frequency. A specific theoretical model is derived, and the amplitude and timing jitter behaviour of the RF signals are analyzed and experimentally validated. The timing jitter reveals to be constant at any RF generated frequency, making the considered RF generation method suitable for the realization of flexible and highly stable micro-and millimeter-wave coherent radar transceivers. The performance of the considered RF generation architecture are compared with a state-of-the-art RF synthesizer, proving that the optically generated RF signals meet the high stability requirements of the new generation of coherent radar systems, even at extremely high frequencies (EHF).

[EN] We study the phase and amplitude stability of RF signals, generated at different frequencies by heterodyning pairs of modes from the optical spectrum of an active mode-locked laser, and we focus on the dependence of noise on the RF frequency. A specific theoretical model is derived, and the amplitude and timing jitter behaviour of the RF signals are analyzed and experimentally validated. The timing jitter reveals to be constant at any RF generated frequency, making the considered RF generation method suitable for the realization of flexible and highly stable micro-and millimeter-wave coherent radar transceivers. The performance of the considered RF generation architecture are compared with a state-of-the-art RF synthesizer, proving that the optically generated RF signals meet the high stability requirements of the new generation of coherent radar systems, even at extremely high frequencies (EHF).

Presents different polarimetric and interferometric inversion radar approaches to extract the characteristics of vegetation and bare soil surfaces. The inversion techniques presented make use of multifrequency, radar interferometric and polarimetric data to increase the number of input data. The proposed techniques have been experimentally tested under laboratory conditions as well as in real outdoor scenarios, Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

The application of polarimetric radar interferometry to the estimation of vegetation height is studied. A comparison between different choices for the scattering mechanisms employed in the retrieval algorithm is presented. When applied to crops, the best results are derived from the height difference between interferograms generated at HH+VV and HH-VV polarizations, Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

A coherence optimization method, which makes use of polarimetry to enhance the quality of the interferograms, has been experimentally tested under laboratory conditions in an anechoic chamber. The experiments have proved the remarkable contribution that this technique offers in two important applications: the improvement of digital elevation maps (DEM) generation and the estimation of the height of vegetation targets, Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

A SAR raw data simulator and a SAR processor are used as a tool for performance assessment of SAR interferometry algorithms like the multi-baseline and multifrequency. Traditional algorithms have also been tested with real ERS-1 data and validated with a high accuracy reference DEM., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)