• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.475-491
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• 2021

With the recent increase in available high-resolution (< ~1 m) satellite SAR images, the demand for precise registration of SAR images is increasing in various fields including change detection. The registration between high-resolution SAR images acquired in different look angle is difficult due to speckle noise and geometric distortion caused by the characteristics of SAR images. In this study, registration is performed in two stages, coarse and fine, using the x-band SAR data imaged at staring spotlight mode of TerraSAR-X. For the coarse registration, a method combining the adaptive sampling method and SAR-SIFT (Scale Invariant Feature Transform) is applied, and three rigid methods (NCC: Normalized Cross Correlation, Phase Congruency-NCC, MI: Mutual Information) and one non-rigid (Gefolki: Geoscience extended Flow Optical Flow Lucas-Kanade Iterative), for the fine registration stage, was performed for performance comparison. The results were compared by using RMSE (Root Mean Square Error) and FSIM (Feature Similarity) index, and all rigid models showed poor results in all image combinations. It is confirmed that the rigid models have a large registration error in the rugged terrain area. As a result of applying the Gefolki algorithm, it was confirmed that the RMSE of Gefolki showed the best result as a 1~3 pixels, and the FSIM index also obtained a higher value than 0.02~0.03 compared to other rigid methods. It was confirmed that the mis-registration due to terrain effect could be sufficiently reduced by the Gefolki algorithm.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.103-112
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• 2012

We demonstrate the preliminary results of ship detection application using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and automatic identification system (AIS) together. Multi-frequency and multi-temporal SAR images such as TerraSAR-X and Cosmo-SkyMed (X-band), and Radarsat-2 (C-band) are acquired over the West Sea in South Korea. In order to compare with SAR data, we also collected an AIS data. The SAR data are pre-processed considering by the characteristics of scattering mechanism as for sea surface. We proposed the "Adaptive Threshold Algorithm" for classification ship efficiently. The analyses using the combination of the SAR and AIS data with time series will be very useful to ship detection or tracing of the ship.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.30 no.6_1
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• pp.519-528
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• 2012

It was pointed out that the terrain distortion of SAR image is even worse than that of optical image although SAR imagery has the advantages of being independent of solar illumination and weather conditions. It is thus necessary to correct terrain distortion in SAR image for various application areas to integrate SAR and optical image information. There has to be a clear evaluation of terrain correction of high resolution SAR image according to the quality of DEM because the DEM of study site is generally used in the process of terrain correction. To achieve this issue, this paper compared the effects of quality of Digital Elevation Model(DEM) in the process of terrain correction of high resolution SAR images, using the DEM produced from 1:5000 topographic contour maps, LiDAR DEM, ASTER GDEM, SRTM DEM. We used TerraSAR-X and Cosmo-SkyMed, as the test data set, which are constructed on the same X-band SAR system as KOMPSAT-5. In order to evaluate quantitatively the correction results, we conducted comparative evaluation with the KOMPSAT-2 ortho image of the same region. The evaluation results showed that the DEM produced from 1:5000 topographic contour maps achieved successful results in the terrain correction of SAR image compared with the other DEM data, and the widely used SRTM DEM data in various applications was not suitable for the terrain correction of high resolution SAR images.

• Journal of Cadastre & Land InformatiX
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.79-90
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• 2017

Urban environment represent one of the most dynamic regions on earth. As in other countries, forests, green areas, agricultural lands are rapidly changing into residential or industrial areas in South Korea. Monitoring such rapid changes in land use requires rapid data acquisition, and satellite imagery can be an effective method to this demand. In general, SAR(Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellites acquire images with an active system, so the brightness of the image is determined by the surface roughness. Therefore, the water areas appears dark due to low reflection intensity, In the residential area where the artificial structures are distributed, the brightness value is higher than other areas due to the strong reflection intensity. If we use these characteristics of SAR images, settlement areas can be extracted efficiently. In this study, extraction of settlement areas was performed using TerraSAR-X of German high-resolution X-band SAR satellite and KOMPSAT-5 of South Korea, and object-oriented image classification method using the image segmentation technique is applied for extraction. In addition, to improve the accuracy of image segmentation, the speckle divergence was first calculated to adjust the reflection intensity of settlement areas. In order to evaluate the accuracy of the two satellite images, settlement areas are classified by applying a pixel-based K-means image classification method. As a result, in the case of TerraSAR-X, the accuracy of the object-oriented image classification technique was 88.5%, that of the pixel-based image classification was 75.9%, and that of KOMPSAT-5 was 87.3% and 74.4%, respectively.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.34 no.2_1
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• pp.283-293
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• 2018

We applied PSInSAR to two SAR satellite (ALOS-1 and COSMO-SkyMed) images and analyzed the difference in displacement observation performance according to sensor characteristics. The building layer was extracted from the digital topographic map, and the PS extracted from the SAR image was classified into two groups(building structure and ground surface) for density analysis. The density of PS extracted from the research area was $0.023point/m^2$ for ALOS-1 PALSAR and $0.1point/m^2$ for COSMO-SkyMed, more than 4 times PS was extracted compared to ALOS-1. In addition, not only the PS density in the building, but also the density in the ground were greatly increased. The average displacement velocity of ALOS-1 PALSAR is within ${\pm}1cm/yr$, while for COSMO-SkyMed it is within ${\pm}0.3cm/yr$. Although it is difficult to make quantitative comparisons because it does not use the data for the same period, it can be said that the accuracy of X-band SAR system is very high compared to the L-band. In consideration of PS observation density and observation accuracy of displacement, X-band SAR data is very effective in research where it is important to acquire useful signals from the ground surface, such as ground subsidence and sinkhole.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• v.2
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• pp.692-694
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• 2006

X-SAR images taken on the coastal waters of Hwanghe province in Korea during SIR-C/X-SAR campaign in April and October 1994 are analysed. The SAR images show the peculiar signatures like nail marks, curved long string, and vortex streets patterns and they all seem to be produced by strong interactions between the topography in the coastal waters and tidal currents. The nail mark signatures are located at the same position of small scaled sand banks and the curved line patterns are almost identical to the outer boundary of large sand banks. Based on the tidal record, all the three images are taken at the almost same phase of tidal cycles, which are close to the low tide. It seems that bottom shapes are more strongly appeared on the SAR images when the tidal currents are slow. The front between two different current velocities caused by the flows along the steep boundaries of sandbanks is also the main factors imprinting the bottom features to the sea surface SAR images

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2008.03a
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• pp.176-179
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• 2008

In the present article, wave imaging mechanisms were investigated using airborne Pi-SAR (Polarimetric-Interferometric SAR) X-band VV images of ocean waves around the Miyake Island at approximately 180 km south from Tokyo, Japan. Two images of a same scene were produced at approximately 20 min. interval from two directions at right angles. One image shows dominant range travelling waves, but the other image shows a different wave pattern. This difference can be caused by the different image modulations of RCS and velocity bunching. In this study, 18 subimages are extracted, and the directional wave spectra are compared to each other of the two different areas.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.157-175
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• 2000

A synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system is able to provide all-weather, day-and- night superior imaging capability of the earth surface, and thus is extremely useful in surveillance for both civil and military applications. In this paper, the X-band high resolution spaceborne SAR system design is demonstrated with the key design performance for a given mission and system requirements characterized by the small satellite system. The SAR multi-mode imaging technique is presented with a critical parameter assessment, and the standard mode results are analyzed in terms of the image quality performances. In line with the system requirement X-band SAR payload and ground reception/processing subsystems are designed and the major design results are presented with the key performance characteristics. This small satellite SAR system shows the wide range of imaging capability with high resolution, and proves to be an effective surveillance systems in the light weight, high performance and cost-effective points of view.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.415-419
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• 2006

X-SAR images taken on the coastal waters of Hwanghe province in Korea during SIR-C/X-SAR campaign in April and October 1994 are analysed. The SAR images show the peculiar signatures like nail marks, curved long string, and vortex street patterns and they all seem to be produced by strong interactions between the topography in the coastal waters and tidal currents. The nail mark signatures are located at the same position of small scaled sand banks and the curved line patterns are almost identical to the outer boundary of large sand banks. Based on the tidal records, all the three images are taken at the almost same phase of tidal cycles, which are close to the low tide. It seems that bottom shapes are more strongly appeared on the SAR images when the tidal currents are slow. The front between two different current velocities caused by the flows along the steep boundaries of sandbanks is also the main factors imprinting the bottom features to the sea surface SAR images.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.251-254
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• 2008

The German radar satellite TerraSAR was launched in 2007. In this study, interferogram is generated using TerraSAR-X data and DEM (Digital Elevation Model). Coregistration procedures used with SAR images (i.e. master and slave) in traditional method results in serious errors for high resolution TerraSARX data because of the mutual shift of the master and slave images due to topography. This error becomes more serious in mountainous areas in which the coherence between interferometric pairs is relatively low. Here we processed a geometric coregistration with DEM exploiting height information. Through the method, interferometry processing is fulfilled to generate a qualified interferogram and coherence is improved. This approach will help high resolution X-band SAR interferometry in mountainous area.