Imaging from Spaceborne and Airborne Sars, Calibration, and Applications

Masanobu Shimada (M’97-SM’04-F’11) received the BS and MS degrees in aeronautical engineering from Kyoto University in 1977 and 1979, and the PhD degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1999. He joined the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA, former Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)) in 1979 and conducted the research projects for 34 years. During that, he made three achievements: 1) Sensor developments, i.e., Ku-band Scatterometer, Polarimetric Interferometric Airborne L-band SAR 1 and 2, 2) Operational Algorithm developments: SAR imaging, Interferometry, Polarimetry, Calibration, Mosaicking, and applications, 3) lead the science projects: the JERS-1 SAR calibration and validation (1992-1998), the JERS-1 Science project (Global rainforest and boreal forest mapping project and SAR interferometry for detecting the deformation distribution), the ALOS science project and PALSAR CALVAL, and the Kyoto and Carbon Initiative project using the time series PALSAR/PALSAR2 mosaics. His most impacted achievements are the deformation detection of the Hanshinn-Awaji-Earthquake using the JERS-1 SAR Interferometry, generation of world first global SAR mosaics that depicts the annual deforestation change, and experimental near real time deforestation monitoring using the ALOS/PALSAR ScanSAR.

His current research interests are high resolution imaging for spaceborne and airborne SARs (PALSAR-2 and Pi-SAR-L2), calibration and validation, SAR applications including polarimetric SAR interferometry, and MTI using the UAVSAR interferometry.

Since April 1 2015, He is a professor at Tokyo Denki University, an invited researcher of JAXA, and a guest professor of Yamaguchi University, and from 2018, a lecturer at the Nara Women University. At Tokyo Denki University, he brought up the graduation of the 18 students, on-going 6 master students.