IISER MOHALI

Abstract: Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) remote sensing has gained importance in the last few decades due to its complementary capabilities to optical sensors and capability to capture the variations in structure and dielectric properties of the target. The last decade has seen enormous growth in the applications of SAR data, especially due to the open-source availability of Sentinel-1 SAR data from ESA beginning in 2014. With the launch of NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR) and the ESA BIOMASS missions, we will have, for the first time, publicly available data at P-, L-,S- and C-band frequencies. This opens access to unprecedented data for researchers to develop their applications. This talk provides a brief overview on the basics of SAR technology and how the imaging with SAR is different to its optical counterpart. We will also look at the characteristics of SAR data and how it impacts the application domains, particularly agriculture, forestry and wetlands. In conclusion, I would like to shed some light on the advanced topic of SAR tomography in context of the ESA BIOMASS mission, and how it can potentially provide 3-D views of forests and snow.