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8/19/2008 5:26:33 PM

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  By Mary Jo Wagner, freelance writer, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.  
   
  Sequels often are viewed with skepticism, particularly if the first product was highly lauded. This is where MDA Geospatial Services (www.mdacorporation.com/geospatial) finds itself as it prepares for the launch of RADARSAT-2, the highly anticipated follow up to the successful RADARSAT-1 commercial satellite program. But if industry pundits' predictions are right, when RADARSAT-2 is operational in 2007, users may agree that the sequel can indeed be better than the first.

Indeed, that would be a fortuitous consensus for Richmond, British Columbia-based MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDA), owner and operator of RADARSAT-2. By successfully building a healthy commercial market for SAR with RADARSAT-1, RADARSAT-2 now will enter a more crowded SAR space, joining Europe's ENVISAT, Japan's ALOS and Germany's TerraSAR-X. And all of these SAR satellites have overlapping capabilities and are suitable for a range of similar applications.

But according to Dr. Vernon Singhroy, a professional engineer and senior research scientist at the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing (CCRS), there are some overriding distinctions that set RADARSAT-2 apart from other SAR satellites.  "Advanced sensor capabilities are one aspect, but the distribution capabilities are another," he says from CCRS' headquarters in Ottawa. "RADARSAT-2 will already have the infrastructure to provide users with reliable and rapid data delivery. Having both aspects from the start puts RADARSAT-2 in a unique market position."


Many Means to an End
Departing from the original government-led RADARSAT-1 program, the RADARSAT-2 mission represents a public-private partnership between MDA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). MDA will own and operate the satellite and ground segment—MDA's Geospatial Services will still direct and manage the commercial distribution of the data—and CSA has contributed funds for the satellite's construction and launch. In exchange for its financial investment in the program, CSA will receive RADARSAT-2 data for Canadian government agencies during the lifetime of the mission.

As owner and operator of RADARSAT-2, MDA wanted to ensure the sequel wouldn't disappoint. The company chose a trusted trio of companies to build the satellite's three main components: the SAR payload, the Bus and the Extendible Support Structure (ESS).


The ESS is the mechanical interface between the Bus and Antenna structure that deploys the radar antenna and maintains it in a stable, precise position for accurate imaging. EMS Technologies Canada in Montreal (now MDA) was the primary contractor for the SAR payload. Rome-based Alcatel Alenia Space (www1.alcatel-lucent.com/space) took care of the Bus and ATK-Able (www.aec-able.com) of Santa Barbara, Calif., was responsible for the ESS. Currently, the spacecraft sits at the David Florida Laboratory in Ottawa undergoing extensive final tests before being transported to Kazakhstan where Starsem, the French-Russian launch company, will manage RADARSAT-2's take off on a Soyuz vehicle from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome.


Combining Heritage and Innovation
RADARSAT-2 will have many of the same capabilities of its predecessor and will continue to offer all of RADARSAT-1's beam modes and products, providing users with data continuity and a seamless transition to RADARSAT‑2. Moreover, capitalizing on its successes with RADARSAT-1 and extensive knowledge of user needs and future desires, MDA engineered RADARSAT-2 to offer several enhanced technical advancements, including 3-meter imaging, fully selectable multipolarization modes, left- and right-looking imaging options to improve revisit times, superior SAR imaging time and data storage, and significantly improved programming lead times and order processing speeds.

One of the hallmarks of the RADARSAT program has been its flexible imaging modes and the ability for users to select the right beam combination for their application. RADARSAT-2 will offer this same flexibility for all beam modes, including the new Ultra-Fine beam mode (3-meter resolution) and a new Multi-Look Fine mode (8-meter resolution) that will reduce the speckle noise inherent in the existing Fine mode and improve users' abilities to discriminate features.

In addition, during the last year, MDA successfully configured the satellite to accommodate another new beam mode called Spotlight, which will offer 1-meter nominal resolution with a scene size of approximately 18 kilometers by 8 kilometers. According to Adrian Bohane, MDA Geospatial Services' director of Worldwide Sales, adding the Spotlight mode was a strategic decision to further improve its competitive position in the SAR market.

"It was clear that RADARSAT-2 would be launched in a more competitive environment and we needed to address that," he says. "Because RADARSAT-2 is completely configurable, it enabled us to develop the Spotlight mode, which, coupled with our strong ground segment and service delivery, allows us to greatly improve our commercial offer to traditional and new markets."


Pole Position
However, when discussing the satellite's features, most researchers, users and business developers focus on RADARSAT-2's multipolarization, a capability that enables the SAR sensor to both send and receive different combinations of polarized waves simultaneously, enabling users to identify a greater variety of surface features and targets.

Unlike with RADARSAT-1, which is a single co-polarized sensor, RADARSAT-2 will be able to send out a horizontal wave, but record both the horizontal and vertical backscatter (HH and HV), or send out a vertical wave and record both the vertical and horizontal backscatter (VV and VH). In all, the satellite will be able to record in HH, VV, HV and VH polarizations simultaneously. With such flexibility, users can tailor acquisitions to more specifically suit the problem they're trying to solve. And with the heightened information provided by polarimetric data, users can eliminate the need to acquire multiple multiangle RADARSAT-1 scenes.

The trick will be discovering the right combination of polarization to use. That's a quest that has consumed SAR experts at MDA and captured the interest of many researchers and users across the globe who have been conducting research to discover just what fully polarimetric and selective polarimetric data can offer.

Though they can only make predictions, popular consensus among avid SAR users and researchers is that the multipolarization and fully polarimetric (quad-pol) data will be an information boon to a great number of applications such as maritime surveillance, mapping, agriculture and defense.

"With RADARSAT-2's selective polarization capabilities, we will acquire more information content and be able to optimize beam modes to improve our ability to better discern ships for ship detection applications," says Harm Greidanus, a research scientist with the European Commission (EC) Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra, Italy. "And with the Ultra-Fine beam and quad-pol data, we expect to improve our capabilities in classifying ships in ports and in transit."

"If RADARSAT-2 can provide this selective polarization ability and continues to offer flexible programming and a reliable near real-time data service, then I think it will be quite attractive for the maritime-applications market," he adds.


JRC is the primary technology advisor to the EC, so positive support from the center's researchers could bode well for RADARSAT-2 and MDA's Geospatial Services as commission members weigh JRC recommendations heavily when developing new policies. In fact, based on the center's extensive testing and positive results on the use of SAR imagery for fisheries control, the EU passed a new fisheries-control regulation on Dec. 21, 2006. The decree will require all Member States from Jan. 1, 2009, to ensure their fisheries monitoring centers are able to integrate satellite imagery with vessel monitoring systems, and to routinely use satellite imagery in scenarios in which the benefits outweigh the costs to detect fishing vessels in a given area.

An Anchor for Maritime Applications
The broad maritime surveillance sector, including ship detection, fisheries control, oil spill monitoring, ice monitoring and mapping, has been a strong market for RADARSAT-1. Its wide-area coverage, adequate resolution and rapid data delivery has promoted it to a mission-critical information source for several operational marine monitoring programs, and most foresee RADARSAT-2 continuing that tradition. For example, the satellite will be a cornerstone of Canada's $60 million Polar Epsilon program designed to monitor vessel traffic along Canada's East and West coasts.

With its enhanced features, the satellite may also set anchor in new marine sectors such as coastal fisheries and aquaculture. Hatfield Consultants, an environmental consulting company based in North Vancouver, B.C., is analyzing the feasibility of integrating RADARSAT-2 imagery with traditional data sources to better support and service the aquaculture industry, a market the company claims is the fastest growing food production sector in the world.

Through its RADARSAT-2 Aquaculture Mapping (RAM) project, a team is acquiring simulated data to test the ability of the satellite's enhanced beam modes, selective polarization and quad-pol data to improve aquaculture facility detection and classification. Andy Dean, a remote sensing and GIS specialist at Hatfield, is hopeful that his predictions come true.  "RADARSAT-2's higher resolution, its Multi-Look Fine beam, and its quad-polarization should provide us with superior image quality to visually interpret individual aquaculture facilities and to map them," explains Dean. "That will be a substantial advantage to helping boost people's confidence in radar imagery."

 

  
 
"We also hope the fully polarimetric data will enable us to begin building a classification database of diverse aquaculture structures worldwide," he adds.
 

Intelligence for Intelligence
According to Bohane, enhancing RADARSAT-2 with the 1-meter Spotlight mode will make the satellite attractive to the intelligence sector.

"The defense sector is an area that historically has been dominated by the optical market," he says. "With 1-meter imagery, we expect RADARSAT-2 data to truly become on par with the optical offerings. Coupled with the satellite's other program features, we predict the defense and intel communities' interest in RADARSAT-2 will spike considerably."

In 2006, MDA's Geospatial Services signed a RADARSAT-2 contract with an Asian client in the intelligence sector. "For the defense and intel market it's all about change detection—monitoring areas of interest," says Tom Hughes, MDA Geospatial Services' RADARSAT-2 sales director. "With RADARSAT-2's superior SAR imaging time of 28 minutes and its 1-meter Spotlight mode, we will have the technical capacity to better serve this market."


InSAR Increases
Change detection applications and the increasing need to monitor infrastructure has helped strengthen the business case for interferometric SAR (InSAR). Alessandro Ferretti, CEO and co-founder of Tele-Rilevamento Europa (www.treuropa.com), a Milan-based company credited with pioneering the development of the sophisticated permanent scatterer InSAR (PSInSAR) technique, reports the company's revenues rose 30 percent in 2006 due to an increased awareness and adoption of InSAR for geohazards monitoring in Europe. He expects the data continuity provided by RADARSAT-2, along with its advanced features, will bring further revenue increases during the next year.


"The improved technical features of RADARSAT-2, compared to the RADARSAT-1 sensor, in terms of platform stability, spatial resolution and polarimetric capabilities will definitely make new InSAR applications feasible," he says. "For example, the higher spatial resolution should allow users to monitor individual buildings in a city and improve the ability to detect tiny displacements affecting dikes and dams, both of which are presently a challenge."

MDA's Geospatial Services has been increasing its efforts to commercialize InSAR's use through several successful pipeline-monitoring and geohazard-monitoring projects in Latin and North America, proving that the InSAR technique can be a viable monitoring mechanism in a variety of monitoring environments such as pipelines, oil and gas infrastructures and mines. Based on those successes, a few clients in Latin America are planning to integrate InSAR into their operational monitoring business. And the company has several more InSAR projects lined up in both regions.

In addition, RADARSAT-2 should open new InSAR monitoring opportunities in areas that have proven problematic for RADARSAT-1 such as urban environments, according to Adrian McCardle, a project manager with MDA Geospatial Services.

"The 3-meter and 1-meter resolutions of RADARSAT-2 will allow users to find smaller targets to monitor large-scale subsidence of a dense city or rural setting," relates McCardle. "In rural areas where you don't have many point targets, the higher spatial resolution will enable us to better detect scatterers. In urban areas where you often have too many point targets, we'll be able to refine our detection down to individual buildings."
 

CCRS' Singhroy sees strong potential for RADARSAT-2 and InSAR for monitoring land motion, particularly along linear assets such as transport and energy corridors. He and his team are developing methodologies and guidelines for InSAR applications in complex terrain for monitoring strategic energy and transport corridors. He is particularly focused on studying the feasibility of using InSAR techniques as a remote monitoring tool for the pending Mackenzie Gas Project, a planned 1,220-kilometer natural gas pipeline network along the Mackenzie Valley in Canada's Northwest Territories that will connect far northern gas fields in Canada and the United States.


"Although the pipeline hasn't been built yet, we are using InSAR motion maps to help the project managers refine the proposed route around high-risk areas, and we expect it will be used as a routine monitoring tool to watch these areas," says Singhroy. "RADARSAT-2's high resolution, its right-left looking and multi-incidence-angle capabilities will allow users to choose the right viewing angle for a particular terrain. This will make the satellite well suited for providing reliable InSAR-motion maps, which will lead to a substantial commercial impact."

Staying Grounded
As promising as the outlook appears for RADARSAT-2, it's all just rhetoric if the data never reach users. The satellite's ground operations are, in many users' minds, equally important to the capabilities of the spacecraft.


"The satellite technology is a huge driver for us, but equally if not more important than the sensor capabilities of the technology is the satellite's ground segment," says Grant Bruce, vice president and principal at Hatfield. "There are a surprising number of applications that require data at a certain time and place, and MDA's Geospatial Services is good at getting the data to you when you need it."

Building on the strength of RADARSAT‑1's ground and operations segment, RADARSAT‑2 will be operated with notably improved ground segment hardware and software to support enhanced, streamlined data operations for satellite tasking, data reception, processing, ordering and distribution. Philippe Rolland, MDA Geospatial Services' head of RADARSAT-2 mission planning, says the upgrades were designed to support the satellite's increased data loads. With 28 minutes of SAR imaging time and polarimetric data, data volumes will be substantial.

  
 
 

Customers who need fast access to imagery such as defense and emergency management personnel will benefit from a programming lead time of up to 12 hours for rapid programming and up to three hours for emergency and urgent acquisitions—four times faster tasking compared to RADARSAT-1. According to MDA's Geospatial Services literature, processing speeds have been increased: "Up to eight
typical RADARSAT-2 products will be produced in under 90 minutes from time of reception." According to Rolland, overall data delivery times will be cut in half.

Many lessons learned with RADARSAT-1 were applied to improving RADARSAT-2's ground segment and operational features.
"We designed RADARSAT-2 to provide a much more seamless and responsive service to customers," explains Rolland. "For example, we'll be able to begin processing orders for archived data as soon as we receive them, and customers will be able to track the status of their order in real time via a Web interface." 

 

  
  A signature of the RADARSAT program has been the access to MDA's Geospatial Services’ acquisition planners 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That tradition will continue with RADARSAT-2, along with extended hours for operational staff in Eastern Canada to further improve response times.

 
The ability to offer both the technology and the ground operations to support it will be a critical component to MDA's Geospatial Services' commercial success. 


"Competitively, everyone wants to have the highest resolution  possible," says Singhroy.  "But from a science point of view, 1 meter and 3 meter is mostly academic. If you're resolving a car from a house, you’ll see both with either resolution. The data provider that can deliver the imagery when you need it is the one that’ll get the business. In my opinion, MDA's Geospatial Services has a market niche because they have 24-hour access to planners, they have the SAR technology and the data distribution system to deliver data quickly."


Indeed, perhaps the RADARSAT sequel will be better than the original.

 

  
   
   
 
 
     
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