SAR2 Technical papers presented at the Automatic Target Recognition Session at the S.P.I.E. Aerosense Conference, Orlando, Florida, April 1999
1. Affens, Davis, Dreibelbis, Rais, Valenti, "The Montana Project."
ABSTRACT: A Piper Malibu aircraft crashed in April 11, 1998 near Kalispell, Montana. After more than a month of visual searching, the official search was suspended and the missing pilot's family turned to private resources and NASA to continue the search. This paper details NASA Goddard Search and Rescue Mission's participation in the follow-on search effort.
2. Jackson, Mansfield, Rais, "NASA Search and Rescue Experiment in the Great Dismal Swamp."
ABSTRACT: Over the seven years of the Search and Rescue Mission's history, a great deal of original research has been done in the area of automatic target detection for beaconless search and rescue using SAR data. A crash site detection tool has been developed. This paper presents the results from using this tool against data from our most recent test campaign.
3. Mansfield, Rais, "L-Band/P-Band SAR Comparison for Search and Rescue - Recent Results."
ABSTRACT: A key question in SAR-aided search is the relative utility of L-band versus P-band data. A continuing study is underway using target data collected by the NASA Search and Rescue Mission. This paper presents the most recent results of the investigation, including Navy P-3 SAR data at L and UHF frequency bands.
4. Mansfield, Huxtable, Rais, "A Real-Time SAR Processing Approach for Search and Rescue."
ABSTRACT: The most important parameter in Search and Rescue is the time it takes to locate the downed aircraft and rescue the survivors. The resulting requirement for wide-area coverage, fine resolution, and day-night all-weather operation dictates the use of a SAR sensor. The time urgency dictates a real-time or near real-time SAR processor. This paper presents alternative real-time architectures and gives the results of feasibility studies of the enabling technologies, including new work by the authors in the area of SAR data compression.
5. Gillian, McCandless, Huxtable, Mansfield, "RADARSAT 2 for Search and Rescue."
ABSTRACT: Scheduled for launch early in the next millennium is the new RADARSAT 2 mission. The SAR instrument on-board will be an upgrade of the RADARSAT 1 SAR instrument including a number of new modes, which have significance for synthetic aperture radar Search and Rescue. There will be a new ultra-fine resolution capability of 3 meters. Full polarimetric data will be available at 9-meter resolution and data for interferometric processing will be available at the new ultra-fine resolution, making this a potentially powerful tool for aircraft crash site detection.
6. Rogers, Mansfield, Poehler, Rais, "The Foliage Problem in Interferometric SAR."
ABSTRACT: The most serious problem for a search and rescue SAR is the presence of tree cover and other foliage obscuring the target from visual detection. It is precisely in these circumstances that a radar based search and rescue should show its value. The problem is that the need for foliage penetration drives the system toward longer wavelengths, while the need for fine resolution drives it to shorter wavelengths. This paper presents a summary of the problem including some approaches taken to solve it.
7. Roth, Rais, Rogers, "Advanced IFSAR Processing for Search and Rescue."
ABSTRACT: One of the most promising tools for airborne SAR search and rescue is the use of interferometric techniques including coherent change detection. These techniques make possible extremely accurate information extraction from SAR image pairs. The potential gain in accuracy is significant, since accuracy of measurements can theoretically be determined to within a wavelength (centimeter accuracy) as opposed to a pixel distance (meters). This paper presents the latest interferometric SAR (IFSAR) processing algorithms developed by the authors, along with examples of their use on actual data.
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