A Multifrequency Polarimetric SAR Processing Chain to Observe Oil Fields in the Gulf of Mexico

Abstract

Within the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad- ministration, multiplatform synthetic aperture radar (SAR) im- agery is being used to aid posthurricane and postaccident response efforts in the Gulf of Mexico, such as in the case of the recent Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The main areas of interest related to such disasters are the following: 1) to identify oil pipeline leaks and other oil spills at sea and 2) to detect man-made metallic targets over the sea. Within the context of disaster monitoring and response, an innovative processing chain is proposed to observe oil fields (i.e., oil spills and man-made metallic targets) using both L- and C-band full-resolution and fully polarimetric SAR data. The processing chain consists of two steps. The first one, based on the standard deviation of the phase difference between the copolarized channels, allows oil monitoring. The second one, based on the different symmetry properties that characterize man- made metallic targets and natural distributed ones, allows man- made metallic target observation. Experiments, accomplished over single-look complex L-band Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) and C-band RADARSAT-2 fully polarimet- ric SAR data gathered in the Gulf of Mexico and related to the Deepwater Horizon accident, show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Furthermore, the proposed approach, being able to process both L- and C-band fully polarimetric and full- resolution SAR measurements, can take full benefit of both the ALOS PALSAR and RADARSAT-2 missions, and therefore, it allows enhancing the revisit time and coverage which are very critical issues in oil field observation

Polarimetric synthetic aperture radar utilized to track oil spills

“…With the advent of polarimetric SARs, new, effective, and automatic physical approaches have been conceived to locate and monitor oil spills [Gade et al, 1998;Migliaccio et al, 2011Migliaccio et al, , 2009aMigliaccio et al, , 2009bNunziata et al, 2011Nunziata et al, , 2010Nunziata et al, , 2008Velotto et al, 2011;Zhang et al, 2011]. These new approaches exploit the correlation characteristic between and among polarimetric signals when crude oil at sea is observed.…”

Sea Oil Spill Detection Using Self-Similarity Parameter of Polarimetric Sar Data

“…However, there are other natural phenomena which cause dark areas in SAR images (Migliaccio et al, 2005), including natural biological slicks, low-wind areas, rain clouds, etc. These called look-alikes phenomena also form the dark spot area in the SAR image like oil slicks, which increase the difficulty of SAR oil spill detection , Migliaccio et al, 2012.…”

“…The polarimetric information is propitious to distinguish between oil slicks and look-alikes (Migliaccio et al, 2012). There are different physicochemical properties and scattering behavior between oil slicks and look-alikes.…”

“…In oil slicks, the capillary waves and short gravity waves are restrained because of the stickiness of oil slicks. So, the backscattering of oil slicks is mainly non-Bragg scattering, and it is more complex than clean ocean and look-alikes (Nunziata et al, 2011, Migliaccio et al, 2012. Based on this theory, there are many studies of oil spill detection based on polarimetric features in recent years, which detect oil slicks by the differences of polarimetric scattering mechanism between oil slicks and non-oil slicks (such as look-alikes and water) , Wang et al, 2010, Nunziata et al, 2011, Zhang et al, 2011, Liu et al, 2011, Nunziata et al, 2013, Skrunes et al, 2014, Migliaccio et al, 2015.…”

The simulation of localized surface plasmon and surface plasmon polariton in wire grid polarizer integrated on InP substrate for InGaAs sensor

“…3 In environmental protection, it can detect oil spill over the sea. 4 With the increasing demand for more compact size and higher alignment precision of polarimetric sensor, it attracts a growing attention to integrate wire grid polarizer on the sensor surface. 5,6 Short wavelength infrared InGaAs sensor with lattice matched InP substrate has been commonly applied in various field, such as astronomical observation, earth detection and machine vision.…”