Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English en
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-05-14

Optical radar sensor fusion for environmental applications.

CORDIS provides links to public deliverables and publications of HORIZON projects.

Links to deliverables and publications from FP7 projects, as well as links to some specific result types such as dataset and software, are dynamically retrieved from OpenAIRE .

Deliverables

Summary: The interferometric process implemented is a sequence of algorithms for the generation of Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) starting from two SAR images. A diagram describing the interferometric process is shown in next figure. Each step of the procedure is described in the following. All the algorithms are written in FORTRAN and they are running in an ALPHA VAX Station. The different modules of the process can be adapted to different SAR sensors and formats. However, at present, the interferometric algorithms are tailored to the ERS-1/2 SAR interferometric product i.e. the Single Look Complex (SLC) format. This kind of SAR image contains, for each image pixel, amplitude and phase of the radar signal. Actually, for each image pixel the SLC image contains a complex number. During the acquisition the received signal is demodulated to remove the carrier wave which is useful only for transmission and does not contain useful information. Then, the so-called complex voltage is generated. Its two components are the in-phase (I) and the in-quadrature (Q) components: I=A (t) sin F(t) in phase (1). Q=A (t) cos F(t) in-quadrature (2). Where A(t) is the signal amplitude and fi(t) the signal phase.

Exploitable results

The quality of the DEMs and orthoimages generated with optical or radar data is affected by the intrinsic limitations of the remote sensing systems. Optical images can be corrupted if fog or clouds cover the imaged scenes; SAR images are affected by strong geometric distortions in rugged areas. These limitations in the original data can influence both the accuracy of the generated DEMs and their completeness (eg cloudy areas in the optical image result in holes in the generated DEM grid). The use of data from different remote sensing sources and their integration (data fusion) for DEM generation and geocoding can offer a solution to overcome the above mentioned limitations. Thus, at present the best option to develop an operational tool for DEM generation using SAR images could be the synergic use of both techniques: radargrammetry for the generation of a preliminary DEM, capturing information about the high relief and without atmospheric effects, and interferometry for the improvement of the radargrammetric DEM, with better spatial resolution and low relief information. For this purpose, further research is necessary in the future.

Searching for OpenAIRE data...

There was an error trying to search data from OpenAIRE

No results available

My booklet 0 0