Towards a GPS-based TEC prediction model for Southern Africa with feed forward networks

In this paper, first results from a national Global Positioning System (GPS) based total electron content (TEC) prediction model over South Africa are presented. Data for 10 GPS receiver stations distributed through out the country were used to train a feed forward neural network (NN) over an interval of at most five years. In the NN training, validating and testing processes, five factors which are well known to influence TEC variability namely diurnal variation, seasonal variation, magnetic activity, solar activity and the geographic position of the GPS receivers were included in the NN model. The database consisted of 1-min data and therefore the NN model developed can be used to forecast TEC values 1 min in advance. Results from the NN national model (NM) were compared with hourly TEC values generated by the earlier developed NN single station models (SSMs) at Sutherland (32.38°S, 20.81°E) and Springbok (29.67°S, 17.88°E), to predict TEC variations over the Cape Town (33.95°S, 18.47°E) and Upington (28.41°S, 21.26°E) stations, respectively, during equinoxes and solstices. This revealed that, on average, the NM led to an improvement in TEC prediction accuracy compared to the SSMs for the considered testing periods.     

Carbon monoxide spatial gradients over source regions as observed by SCIAMACHY: A case study for the United Kingdom

Carbon monoxide (CO) is an important air pollutant whose emissions and atmospheric concentrations need to be monitored. The measurements of the SCIAMACHY instrument on ENVISAT are sensitive to CO concentration changes at all atmospheric altitude levels including the boundary layer. The SCIAMACHY CO measurements therefore contain information on CO emissions. Until now no studies have been published where the SCIAMACHY CO measurements have been used to quantify CO emissions by applying, for example, inverse modelling approaches. Here we report about a step in this direction. We have analysed three years of CO columns to investigate if spatial gradients resulting from United Kingdom (UK) CO emissions can be observed from space. The UK is an interesting target area because the UK is a relatively well isolated CO source region. On the other hand, the UK is not the easiest target as its emissions are only moderate and because the surrounding water has low reflectivity in the 2.3 μm spectral region used for CO retrieval. We determined horizontal CO gradients from seasonally and yearly averaged CO during 2003–2005 over the UK taking into account daily wind fields. We show that the measured CO longitudinal (downwind) gradients have the expected order of magnitude. The estimated 2σ error of the gradients depends on time period and applied filtering criteria (e.g., land only, cloud free) and is typically 10–20% of the total column. The gradients are barely statistically significant within the 2σ error margin. This is mainly because of the relatively high noise of the SCIAMACHY CO measurements in combination with a quite low number of measurements (∼100) mainly due to cloud cover.     

An introduction to China FY3 radio occultation mission and its measurement simulation

GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) radio occultation mission for remote sensing of the Earth’s atmosphere will be performed by GNOS (GNSS Occultation Sounder) instrument on China FengYun-3 (FY3) 02 series satellites, the first of which FY3-C will be launched in the year 2013. This paper describes the FY3 GNOS mission and presents some results of measurement simulation. The key designed specifications of GNOS are also shown. The main objective of simulation is to provide scientific support for GNOS occultation mission on the FY3-C satellites. We used EGOPS software to simulate occultation measurements according to GNOS designed parameters. We analyzed the accuracy of retrieval profiles based on two typical occultation events occurring in China South–East area among total simulated events. Comparisons between the retrieval atmospheric profiles and background profiles show that GNOS occultation has high accuracy in the troposphere and lower stratosphere. The sensitivities of refractivity to three types of instrumental error, i.e. Doppler biases, clock stability and local multipath, were analyzed. The results indicated that the Doppler biases introduced by along-ray velocity error and GNOS clock error were the primary error sources for FY3-C occultation mission.     

TanDEM-X: A radar interferometer with two formation-flying satellites

TanDEM-X (TerraSAR-X add-on for Digital Elevation Measurements) is an innovative formation-flying radar mission that opens a new era in spaceborne radar remote sensing. The primary objective is the acquisition of a global digital elevation model (DEM) with unprecedented accuracy (12 m horizontal resolution and 2 m relative height accuracy). This goal is achieved by extending the TerraSAR-X synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mission by a second, TerraSAR-X like satellite (TDX) flying in close formation with TerraSAR-X (TSX). Both satellites form together a large single-pass SAR interferometer with the opportunity for flexible baseline selection. This enables the acquisition of highly accurate cross-track interferograms without the inherent accuracy limitations imposed by repeat-pass interferometry due to temporal decorrelation and atmospheric disturbances. Besides the primary goal of the mission, several secondary mission objectives based on along-track interferometry as well as new bistatic and multistatic SAR techniques have been defined, representing an important and innovative asset of the TanDEM-X mission. TanDEM-X is implemented in the framework of a public–private partnership between the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and EADS Astrium GmbH. The TanDEM-X satellite was successfully launched in June 2010 and the mission started its operational data acquisition in December 2010. This paper provides an overview of the TanDEM-X mission and summarizes its actual status and performance. Furthermore, results from several scientific radar experiments are presented that show the great potential of future formation-flying interferometric SAR missions to serve novel remote sensing applications.     

A satellite schedulability prediction algorithm for EO SPS

With notably few exceptions, the existing satellite mission operations cannot provide the ability of schedulability prediction, including the latest satellite planning service (SPS) standard-Sensor Planning Service Interface Standard 2.0 Earth Observation Satellite Tasking Extension (EO SPS) approved by Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). The requestor can do nothing but waiting for the results of time consuming batch scheduling. It is often too late to adjust the request when receiving scheduling failures. A supervised learning algorithm based on robust decision tree and bagging support vector machine (Bagging SVM) is proposed to solve the problem above. The Bagging SVM is applied to improve the accuracy of classification and robust decision tree is utilized to reduce the error mean and error variation. The simulations and analysis show that a prediction action can be accomplished in near real-time with high accuracy. This means the decision makers can maximize the probability of successful scheduling through changing request parameters or take action to accommodate the scheduling failures in time.     

CRISTA-NF measurements of water vapor during the SCOUT-O3 Tropical Aircraft Campaign

The new remote sensing experiment CRISTA-NF (Cryogenic Infrared Spectrometers and Telescopes for the Atmosphere – New Frontiers) successfully participated in the SCOUT-O3 Tropical Aircraft Campaign in November and December 2005. CRISTA-NF operated aboard the high-altitude research aircraft M-55 Geophysica. Mid-infrared spectra (4–15 μm) were measured in the limb sounding geometry with high spatial resolution (250 m vertical sampling, 5–15 km along track sampling). Measurements were carried out during transfer flights between Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, and Darwin, Australia, as well as during several local flights near Darwin. Water vapor volume mixing ratios in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere were derived from the CRISTA-NF radiance measurements by utilizing a rapid radiative transfer forward model and the optimal estimation retrieval approach. CRISTA-NF water vapor measurements below the hygropause have a total retrieval error of 15–40% (i.e. root mean square of accuracy and precision). The systematic terms are dominating in the retrieval error budget. The contributions of a priori information to the retrieval results are less than 5–10%. The vertical resolution of the observations is about 250–500 m when permitted by instrument sampling. In this paper we present first results for three transfer flights of the campaign. Being generally in good agreement with corresponding ECMWF operational analyzes, the CRISTA-NF measurements show significantly higher variability and local structures in the upper tropospheric water vapor distributions.     

基于EMD的无参考图像清晰度评价方法

针对现有的灰度变化统计函数不能提供图像全频段综合评价的缺陷,提出了一种新的基于经验模式分解的无参考清晰度评价方法。图像经经验模式分解后,会产生多层本征模式函数图像和剩余图像。不同本征模式函数图像包含了不同频率区间的边缘、纹理信息。模糊图像和清晰图像在相同本征模式函数分解层上,表现出不同的灰度变化特性。通过统计各层本征模式函数图像的极值个数,作等权重加和,并利用整幅图像像素数进行归一化处理,构建了经验模式分解清晰度参数。仿真模糊图像和遥感图像的试验结果验证了该参数评价清晰度的有效性。     

对地观测卫星遥感系统顶层设计的若干思考

介绍了卫星遥感系统的任务和组成;说明了卫星遥感系统顶层设计的基本任务、设计内容和设计原则等;提出了目前卫星遥感系统顶层设计中一些需要探讨的问题,如要关注卫星遥感系统输出产品的定义,以及卫星遥感系统输出产品质量与获取的遥感数据质量的关系;对卫星遥感系统顶层设计涉及的相关内容作了归纳,并提出了一些建议,如进一步研究卫星遥感系统基本构成的划分,做好卫星遥感系统的顶层设计和相关关键技术的预先突破等。     

卫星遥感图像分块小波变换编码方案

提出一种分块小波变换（ＢｌｏｃｋｉｎｇＷａｖｅｌｅｔｓＴｒａｎｓｆｏｒｍ）方案。该数据压缩方案可节省存储时间，为星上应用提供了可能性。利用各基带之间的自相似性，对小波系数采用改进型零树编码（ＩｍｐｒｏｖｅｄＺｅｒｏｔｒｅｅＥｎｃｏｄｉｎｇ），可有效的提高压缩比。     

航天测控系统与天线应用

本文在收集大量国内外有关资料基础上，介绍不同类型天线的组成，技术性能，发展概况以及它们在航天测控系统中的应用；同时还扼要介绍了主要航天测控系统的功能及应用情况。