Pierre Borderies

DORT method as applied to ultrawideband signals for detection of buried objects

The decomposition of the time reversal operator (DORT) method, originally developed in acoustics, allows detection of scatterers embedded in the probed domain and provides some very robust means for focusing an incident wave onto a given scatterer. Hence, this method is very helpful for clutter reduction. Here, it is applied to the detection of buried cylindrical objects with the help of electromagnetic ultrawideband signals. It is shown that when the set of antennas is located on a piece of line above an interface, the use of the DORT method remains simple, whatever the polarization, provided the contribution from the target can be separated from that of the interface. Using wideband signals also permits one to excite natural resonances of the buried scatterer, which can easily be extracted from the eigenvalues of the time reversal operator. Numerical examples based on a finite-difference time-domain algorithm are given.

KaRIn on SWOT: Characteristics of Near-Nadir Ka-Band Interferometric SAR Imagery

The principal instrument of the NASA/CNES wide-swath altimetry mission Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) is the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn), a bistatic synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system operating on near-nadir swaths on both sides of the satellite track. There are limited reports on backscattering from natural surfaces at this short wavelength and particular observation geometry. Near-field backscattering measurements on water, as well as the first interferometric airborne SAR acquisitions at Ka-band covering the 0.6 °-3.9 ° incidence range of KaRIn, were therefore conducted. The experimental results confirm expected characteristics of near-nadir Ka-band interferometric SAR imagery, such as strong water/land radiometric contrast (typically in the order of 10 dB) and very high interferometric coherence on water.

TropiSCAT: A Ground Based Polarimetric Scatterometer Experiment in Tropical Forests

This paper describes a ground-based scatterometer experiment designed to support the definition of the future spaceborne BIOMASS mission for global forest biomass estimation. The scatterometer is installed on a 55 m tower in the tropical rain forest in French Guiana, South America. The objective is the measurement of temporal coherence in all polarizations over a period of one year at different time scales. This paper presents a description of the experiment set up, and shows the first measurements which demonstrate the experiment feasibility. The first results show the coherences at P-band and L-band, and tomographic measurements at different polarizations. The coherence follows daily cycles and retrieves high values at the same hour. These preliminary results have validated the TROPISCAT instrument concept and have led to the final installation with long term automatic polarimetric and tomographic measurements.

Ground-Based Array for Tomographic Imaging of the Tropical Forest in P-Band

In this paper we discuss the design concepts and preliminary results relating to the European Space Agencys ground-based campaign TropiScat, whose main goal is to evaluate temporal coherence at P-band in a tropical forest in quad-polarization, considering temporal lags ranging from hours to months and at different heights within the vegetation layer. The experiment has been successfully set up and operated since October 2011 at the Paracou field station, French Guiana, where the equipment was installed on top of the 55-m high Guyaflux Tower to illuminate the forest below. The system consists of a vector network analyzer connected to 20 antennas through a switchbox, which allows the use of any of them either as a transmitter or as a receiver. Vertical imaging and fully polarimetric capabilities are achieved by operating the 20 antennas in a multistatic fashion, resulting in an equivalent monostatic array consisting of 15 phase centers displaced along the vertical direction in each polarization. Such a design allows unambiguous imaging of the vegetation while yielding a minimum distance between nearby antennas on the order of 0.8 m, so as to minimize coupling effects. The equipment allows the gathering of signals with the tomographic array within a few minutes, resulting in the possibility to produce a tomographic image of the forest with a temporal sampling of 15 min. System calibration and validation was performed by employing a 2-m trihedral reflector and a rotating dihedral reflector. This allowed the evaluation of the system pulse response in all polarizations and also assessment of the extent of tower motions. As a result, tomographic images have been generated from 500 (P-band) to 900 MHz in all polarizations. Results from real data acquired in Fall 2011 confirm the feasibility of carrying out reliable coherence measurements for the whole duration of the campaign.

Vertical Structure of P-Band Temporal Decorrelation at the Paracou Forest: Results From TropiScat

In this letter, we present the results from the ground-based European Space Agency campaign TropiScat, which is aimed at evaluating the temporal coherence at P-band in a tropical forest in all polarizations and at different heights within the vegetation layers. The TropiScat equipment has been operated since October 2011 at the Paracou field station, French Guiana, to continuously produce height-range images of the forest with a temporal sampling of 15 min. The forest temporal behavior can be then captured by analyzing the interferometric coherence between the images gathered at different times, considering time scales on the order of hours, days, and months. The results indicate that the vegetation is likely to undergo a significant motion during day hours due to wind and temperature changes, whereas it appears to be definitively more stable during night hours. This result appears to provide a very useful input to the Biomass Monitoring Mission for Carbon Assessment (BIOMASS), as it suggests that the performance over a tropical forest could be optimized by gathering acquisitions in early morning or night hours. The long-term temporal decorrelation has been then evaluated by considering dawn-dawn acquisitions to minimize the impact of wind gusts and by excluding rainy days in order to not confuse forest and system decorrelation. As a result, the temporal coherence at the ground level was found to stay high at about 0.8 at 27 days, whereas the temporal coherence at the canopy height was found to be about 0.8 at 4 days and about 0.65 at 27 days, indicating coherence sensitivity to height.

Temporal Survey of Polarimetric P-Band Scattering of Tropical Forests

This paper deals with the temporal survey of the tropical forest electromagnetic scattering with a ground-based radar equipment. Installed on the top of a 55 m flux tower overlooking the Paracou forest in French Guiana, a dense primary tropical forest, the radar system uses a vertical antenna array and it is able to provide every 15 minutes P-band complex scattering matrix coefficients. The experiment has been successfully set up and it is operating since October 2011. The main goal of this campaign is to investigate the evolution of the backscattering coefficient and the temporal coherence of the tropical forest at different time scales range. Data are calibrated in relative and processed to take advantage of the largest number of independent looks. Three months of data are exploited in terms of polarimetric temporal coherence and backscattering coefficient in the rainy season and about two months in the dry period. The temporal coherence exhibits daily cycles during the consecutive dry days, whatever the period, and these cycles are perturbed by the presence of rain. Its overall time series appear clearly dependent on the period, dry or rainy, and also on the polarization. The backscattering coefficient time series exhibit also a daily cycle during consecutive dry days, very clearly in the dry period but less pronounced or absent during the rainy period. The backscattering coefficient presents an overall relatively high stability over the full period.

Temporal Coherence of Tropical Forests at P-Band: Dry and Rainy Seasons

In this letter, the temporal coherence of tropical forest scattering at P-band is addressed by means of a ground-based experiment. The study is based on the TropiScat campaign in French Guiana, designed to support the Biomass mission, which will be the ESA 7th Earth Explorer mission. For Biomass, temporal coherence is a crucial parameter for coherent processing of polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferometry and SAR tomography in repeat-pass acquisitions. During the experiment, data were continuously collected for six months during both the rainy and dry seasons. For the rain-free days in both seasons, the coherence exhibits a daily cycle showing a high decorrelation during daytime, which is likely due to motion in the canopy. Up to a 20-day baseline, the coherence is much higher in the dry season than in the rainy season (> 0.8). From 20 to 40 days, it presents the same order of magnitude in both seasons [0.6, 0.7]. For larger temporal baselines, it becomes lower in the dry season. The results can be used to assess the long-term coherence of repeat-pass observations over a tropical forest. However, an extension of this study to several years and over other forest spots would be necessary to draw more general conclusions.

Ka‐band backscattering from water surface at small incidence: A wind‐wave tank study

We report on an experiment conducted at the large Pytheas wind-wave facility in Marseille to characterize the Ka-band radar return from water surfaces when observed at small incidence. Simultaneous measurements of capillary-gravity to gravity wave height and slopes and Normalized Radar Cross Section (NRCS) were carried out for various wind speeds and scattering angles. From this data set we construct an empirical two-dimensional wave number spectrum accounting for the surface current to describe water surface motions from decimeter to millimeter scales. Some consistency tests are proposed to validate the surface wave spectrum, which is then incorporated into simple analytical scattering models. The resulting directional NRCS is found in overall good agreement with the experimental values. Comparisons are performed with oceanic models as well as in situ measurements over different types of natural surfaces. The applicability of the present findings to oceanic as well as continental surfaces is discussed.

Low frequency radar phenomenology study in equatorial vegetation

This paper presents a study based on field measurements on several equatorial foliage penetration phenomena in Singapore. The study includes short-range back scattering and propagation measurements in a very wide frequency band from 100 MHz to 1 GHz. The measurement setup and the data analysis are presented.

preliminary results

We present a method to study the scattering by heterogeneous media based on the two-dimensional (2D), finite-difference-time-domain method and a Monte Carlo algorithm. The inhomogeneities may reach wave-length size and their optical constants are in the visible and infrared domain. The algorithm is used to determine an effective propagation constant in a monodisperse medium from the observation of the energy decay in the medium. The result is compared over a large domain of volume fraction with the Keller and the Foldy-Twersky 2D models to determine the domain of their validity. Then the same approach is applied to homogenize the smallest particles in a bidisperse case and determine when such process is adequate.