Challenge for still Unresolved Development of Multi-band Equatorially Orbiting POLSAR Satellite Sensors

Speaker:Prof. Wolfgang-Martin Boerner (University of Illinois at Chicago)

Time and Date: 9:0-11:00, Oct. 9, 2014

Place: Room 1101, Guanghua East Main Building, Handan Campus

 

 

Abstract

With the relentless increase in population density, the anthropogenic expansion into natural terrestrial hazard zones has become irreversible resulting in ever more catastrophic disasters. These natural events like volcano eruptions, earthquakes with emerging tsunami, cyclones and severe down pours have caused havoc, loss of lives, destruction of infrastructure and above all intentional manmade interference resulting in the deterioration of pristine tropical jungle forests.

What is required is around-the-clock local and wide-area surveillance and remote sensing of the vegetative cover for which first well designed optical equatorially orbiting satellite sensors failed because of the ever increasing cloud, precipitation, humidity and aerosol cover. Hence, we must take recourse to microwave sensing, and implement radar and synthetic aperture sensors from air and space operational at day & night independent of weather; and the sensors especially suited are the fully polarimetric POL-SAR sensors developed for satellite remote sensing by the major SAR technology development centres worldwide.

 

 

Biography

Wolfgang-Martin Boerner received the Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences, August von Platen Gymnasium, Ansbach-Bayern, Germany in 1963, the Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering (Dipl. Ing) from the Technical University, München, Germany in the same year, and the PhD degree in Pennsylvania, USA in 1967. He is an IEEE Fellow and a SPIE fellow (1999), an International Society for Optical and Photogrammetric Engineering Fellow, an American Optical Society Fellow (1995), a Society for Exploration Geophysics Fellow (1995), an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer (1995-1997),a member of the Russian Academy of Transportation Sciences.

He is also on the Editorial Board of the International Remote Sensing Society (1992 – present) and of the SPIE Proceedings on Sensing and Imaging (1991 – present), and was on the Board of Editors of the International Series and Monographs on Advanced EM Wave Theory and Applications (1990).

His current research interest is in the areas of electromagnetic field theory and wave propagation (ELF to microwave, mm-waves, infrared, optical, ultraviolet, x-ray), direct/inverse scattering, radar target mapping & microwave imaging and remote sensing, lidar/radar target phenomenology, radar polarimetry and target polarization analyses, fourier optics and holography, acoustic and electro-magnetic wave propagation in anisotropic, inhomogeneous media, tomography and modern image processing, geoelectromagnetic profile inversion, atmospheric optics non-linear problems in electromagnetic propagation, polarimetry in nature.