The private sector: A global pool of technical talent for remote sensing training and program support

The growing global pool of highly trained, technical talent in the private sector throughout the world reflects the degree of maturation that remote sensing from air and space vehicles has undergone, especially during the past ten years. This has been further spawned by the US Government move to commercialize the Landsat system. The number of qualified technicians and scientists has grown in proportion to the amount of data that has become available for public and private use. Applications of the data have matured from research investigations to operational use in many disciplines and geographic areas. Private and public industry corporations have established their own image processing and analytical laboratories to ensure their competitive positions. This has been further enhanced by the simultaneous availability of lower cost, analytical computer systems. Training and operational project development remain prominent objectives.While these are all very positive aspects a note of caution must be raised. Concern has recently been expressed by representatives of developing nations that not enough attention is given by remote sensing specialists to spelling out the limitations of the sensing systems or qualifying the degree of accuracy of the results obtained. Such criticisms are probably justified and it is recommended that remote sensing workers be mindful of such concerns.     

Basic Concepts in the Processing of SARSAT Signals

Search and rescue satellite-aided tracking (SARSAT) involves the use of satellites in low-polar orbits which relay the emergency signals of distressed vehicles to an earth station for signal analysis. In this paper, we present some basic concepts and a theoretical analysis of the spectra produced by coherent and noncoherent emergency locator transmitter signals. It is shown that coherent signals can be easily processed using linear spectral analysis. Noncoherent signals, however, require more advanced methods.     

Impulse radar evaluation of asphalt-covered bridge decks

The use of impulse radar to distinguish between areas of good bridge deck and areas which suffer from one or more different forms of deterioration, including delamination, scaling, and debonding, is reported. The radar signal is also used to measure the thickness of asphalt and concrete cover over reinforcement. These quantities are important in determining the amount of material to be removed when resurfacing a bridge deck. The calibration procedure and interpretation of radar waveforms are discussed in detail     

Hard X-ray observations of Cygnus X-1 with the MISO telescope

The black hole candidate Cygnus X-1 was observed in the hard X ray - soft γ ray energy range by the MISO telescope on two different occasions: in September 1979 and May 1980. We have measured two hard X-ray states of the source: in 1979 the observed spectrum confirms the superlow state measured in the same period by the HEAO-3 satellite, while in 1980 the MISO X-ray data are consistent with the so called low state of Cygnus X-1. In both occasions, no γ -ray excess has been observed above 200 KeV.     

PEACE: A PLASMA ELECTRON AND CURRENT EXPERIMENT

An electron analyser to measure the three-dimensional velocity distribution of electrons in the energy range from 0.59 eV to 26.4 keV on the four spacecraft of the Cluster mission is described. The instrument consists of two sensors with hemispherical electrostatic energy analysers with a position-sensitive microchannel plate detectors placed to view radially on opposite sides of the spacecraft. The intrinsic energy resolutions of the two sensors are 12.7% and 16.5% full width at half maximum. Their angular resolutions are 2.8° and 5.3° respectively in an azimuthal direction and 15° in a polar direction. The two sensors will normally measure in different overlapping energy ranges and will scan the distribution in half a spacecraft rotation or 2 s in the overlapped range. While this is the fastest time resolution for complete distributions, partial distributions can be recorded in as little as 62.5 ms and angular distributions at a fixed energy in 7.8 ms. The dynamic range of the instrument is sufficient to provide accurate measurements of the main known populations from the tail lobe to the plasmasheet and the solar wind. While the basic structure of the instrument is conventional, special attention has been paid in the design to improving the precision of the instrument so that a relative accuracy of the order of 1% could be attained in flight in order to measure the gradients between the four spacecraft accurately; to decreasing the minimum energy covered by this technique from 10 eV down to 1 eV; and to providing good three dimensional distributions.     

Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation (SECCHI)

The Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation (SECCHI) is a five telescope package, which has been developed for the Solar Terrestrial Relation Observatory (STEREO) mission by the Naval Research Laboratory (USA), the Lockheed Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory (USA), the Goddard Space Flight Center (USA), the University of Birmingham (UK), the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (UK), the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (Germany), the Centre Spatiale de Leige (Belgium), the Institut d’Optique (France) and the Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale (France). SECCHI comprises five telescopes, which together image the solar corona from the solar disk to beyond 1 AU. These telescopes are: an extreme ultraviolet imager (EUVI: 1–1.7 R_⊙), two traditional Lyot coronagraphs (COR1: 1.5–4 R_⊙ and COR2: 2.5–15 R_⊙) and two new designs of heliospheric imagers (HI-1: 15–84 R_⊙ and HI-2: 66–318 R_⊙). All the instruments use 2048×2048 pixel CCD arrays in a backside-in mode. The EUVI backside surface has been specially processed for EUV sensitivity, while the others have an anti-reflection coating applied. A multi-tasking operating system, running on a PowerPC CPU, receives commands from the spacecraft, controls the instrument operations, acquires the images and compresses them for downlink through the main science channel (at compression factors typically up to 20×) and also through a low bandwidth channel to be used for space weather forecasting (at compression factors up to 200×). An image compression factor of about 10× enable the collection of images at the rate of about one every 2–3 minutes. Identical instruments, except for different sizes of occulters, are included on the STEREO-A and STEREO-B spacecraft.     

Total information processor for 121.5/243 MHz SARSAT signals

Search and rescue satellite-aided tracking (SARSAT) has certain shortcomings which could possibly be ameliorated by employing a more extensive signal processing strategy. The approach proposed is based on partially compensating for the Doppler shift, which then permits the data processing windows to be increased significantly. Incorporating a ranking technique with the conventional fast Fourier transform (FFT) processor and implementing an autoregressive moving-average estimator provides an optimal strategy that maximizes the probability of detecting the emergency signals     

Adjustment of systematic errors in ALS data through surface matching

Surface matching is a well researched topic in both Computer Vision (CV) and terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) or ground based light detection and ranging (LiDAR), but the extent of the range images derived from these technologies is typically orders of magnitude smaller than those derived from airborne laser scanning (ALS), also known as airborne LiDAR. Iterative closest point (ICP) and its variants have been successfully used to align and register multiple overlapping views of the range images for CV and TLS applications. However, many challenges are encountered in applying the ICP approach to ALS data sets. In this paper, we address these issues, explore the possibility of automating the algorithm, and present a technique to adjust systematic discrepancies in overlapping strips, using geometrical attributes in a given terrain. In this method, the ALS point samples used in the algorithm are selected depending on their ability to constrain the relative movement between the overlapping laser strips. The points from overlapping strips are matched through modified point to plane based on the ICP method.     

Impulse radar evaluation of concrete, asphalt and waterproofingmembrane

Impulse radar has proved to be effective in the nondestructive testing of bridge decks composed of layers of dielectric materials such as asphalt, waterproofing membrane, and reinforced concrete. In this work, the waveform reflected from these materials are modeled and analyzed theoretically. The relative dielectric constants are measured using sample blocks, and the reflected radar waveform are related to the actual physical structures. It is found that asphalt thickness and cover over reinforcement can be accurately determined     

Advances in high voltage power switching with GTOs

A high-voltage opening switch that uses gate-turnoff thyristors (GTOs) in series and successfully operates at voltages higher than the rated voltage of the individual devices has been demonstrated. The switch design and construction are described, and experimental results are given. The demonstration system is rated at 5 kV and uses 1-kV devices. A larger 24-kV system is under design and will use 4.5-kV devices. In order to design the 24-kV switch, the safe operating area of the large devices must be thoroughly known