CISS 2023

Title

Earth Surface Imaging and Monitoring by Coherent SAR Data Stack Processing

Lecturer

Gianfranco Fornaro    IREA-CNR

Abstract

Thanks to its ability to provide direct physical measurements, interferometry is the technique that has most pushed the applications of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). Repeat-pass differential interferometry and its evolution to Persistent Scatterer Interferometry, have clearly shown the capability of such sensors to preserve “degrees” of signal coherence over repeated passes spanning even intervals of years. This feature allows the accurate localization of ground targets and the monitoring of possible displacements to mm/yr order, and led to a breakthrough in the application of SAR. As a result of this progress, multipass/multiview stacks of coherent SAR data, acquired by a wide variety of sensors over repeated orbits, are now accessible for most of the Earth.

The talk focuses on coherent processing of SAR Data stacks, specifically SAR interferometry and its extension to 3D or multi-D imaging, also known as SAR Tomography or Differential SAR Tomography. Results on real data will be shown to provide examples of applications in the Earth surface imaging and monitoring.   

Gianfranco Fornaro

Short biography

Gianfranco Fornaro received the M.S. degree (summa cum laude) in electronic engineering in 1992 and the Ph.D. in 1997. Since 1993, he has worked at the Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment (IREA) of the National Research Council (CNR), where he currently holds the position of “Research Director” in the area of active microwave remote sensing.

In 2013, Dr. Fornaro obtained the Full Professor habilitation in the Telecommunication area. He has been Adjunct Professor in the area of Telecommunications in several Universities in Southern Italy, including the University of Naples “Federico II” and “Parthenope”. He was a lecturer in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data processing in the NATO Lecture Series SET 191 and SET 235 (2013-2018); since 2010 he has been a lecturer at the International Summer School on Radar/SAR of the “Fraunhofer” FHR Institute.

Dr. Fornaro has been Guest Editor for several journals, among which EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing and IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. He is also an Associate Editor of IEEE Geoscience Remote Sensing Letters (GRSL).

He has been involved in many roles in the major conferences of the remote sensing community, mainly by the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS), and has published more than 200 papers in the most important journals in the remote sensing area and is included in the “top 2% scientist list” elaborated by the Stanford University.

Dr. Fornaro received the Mountbatten Premium by the IEE Society in 1997, the 2011 IEEE GRSL best paper award and the 2011 best Reviewers mention of the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing journal. Several of his Ph.D. students achieved the student award at International conferences, mainly by GRSS. Since 2017, he has been a IEEE Fellow.