Sunday, April 11, 2010

PIRR Review - Radars are everywhere

Last week I attended the PIRR (Progress in Radar Research) workshop sponsored by DSTO. As expected it was full of DSTO employees from various parts of the country as well as some University people.

Zheng Shu from  CSIRO CMIS had the most relevant presentation pertaining to my research area. CSIRO and UNSW are developing techniques for combined use of Landsat and PALSAR for forest monitoring in Tasmania.

There were also talks dense with applied mathematics and beam forming. Some where people were tracking artillery shells with HH/VV radar, even though the shell is symmetric and did not have much difference in cross-section in the 2 polarizations. Then interesting spotlight views of ships from Ingara.

I also saw a very small and neat K-band (24 Ghz) dual-pol patch antenna used for termite detection. Getting closer to a flying radar in the lab then, hope there are no termites around.

No comments: