SAR Essentials for GEOINT demonstrates how to visually interpret and create operational products from SAR imagery. It is designed for imagery analysts who are new to SAR image interpretation and want to exploit it for strategic and intelligence purposes. Each course represents a real-world scenario in which students use SAR Essentials to solve a geospatial problem.
Sections in This Course
Introduction to SAR
5 Hours
- Learning fundamentals of SAR imaging systems
- Opening and displaying SAR magnitude imagery
- Visually interpreting specular, diffuse, and dihedral/multiple returns
Moving Target Detection
2 Hours
- Creating a Moving Target Detection image that highlights moving objects at an airfield
- Creating a Dynamic Moving Target Detection image that can be used to animate moving objects at an airfield
- Estimating the velocity and direction of vessels transiting the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea
Change Detection
2 Hours
- Creating an Amplitude Change Detection (ACD) image that reveals vessel activity in a commercial port
- Creating a Coherent Change Detection (CCD) image that reveals vehicle traffic and construction activity near an Iranian village
Height Estimation
2 Hours
- Creating a Digital Surface Model (DSM) from interferometric SAR image pairs
- Estimating latitude, longitude, and elevation of points on the ground from SAR image pairs
- Estimating the height of tall, vertical objects using layover artifacts in SAR images
Ship Detection
2 Hours
- Performing automatic ship detection with Automatic Identification System (AIS) matching