Using MARSIS signal attenuation to assess the presence of South Polar Layered Deposit subglacial brines.

Knowledge of the physical and thermal properties of the South Polar Layer Deposits (SPLD) is key to constrain the source of bright basal reflections at Ultimi Scopuli detected by the MARSIS (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding) radar sounder. Here we present a detailed analysis of attenuation, based on data acquired by MARSIS at 3, 4, and 5 MHz. We show that attenuation is frequency dependent, and that its behavior is consistent throughout the entire region. This suggests that the SPLD are compositionally homogeneous at Ultimi Scopuli, and our results are consistent with dust contents of 5 to 12%. Using these values as input, and plausible estimates of surface temperature and heat flux, we inferred basal temperatures around 200 K: these are consistent with perchlorate brines within liquid vein networks as the source of the reflections. Furthermore, extrapolation of the attenuation to higher frequencies explains why SHARAD (Shallow Radar) has thus far not detected basal reflections within the SPLD at Ultimi Scopuli.

The Moon's farside shallow subsurface structure unveiled by Chang'E-4 Lunar Penetrating Radar.

On 3 January 2019, China's Chang'E-4 (CE-4) successfully landed on the eastern floor of Von Kármán crater within the South Pole-Aitken Basin, becoming the first spacecraft in history to land on the Moon's farside. Here, we report the observations made by the Lunar Penetrating Radar (LPR) onboard the Yutu-2 rover during the first two lunar days. We found a signal penetration at the CE-4 landing site that is much greater than that at the CE-3 site. The CE-4 LPR images provide clear information about the structure of the subsurface, which is primarily made of low-loss, highly porous, granular materials with embedded boulders of different sizes; the images also indicate that the top of the mare basal layer should be deeper than 40 m. These results represent the first high-resolution image of a lunar ejecta sequence ever produced and the first direct measurement of its thickness and internal architecture.

Inverse Source Data-Processing Strategies for Radio-Frequency Localization in Indoor Environments.

Indoor positioning of mobile devices plays a key role in many aspects of our daily life. These include real-time people tracking and monitoring, activity recognition, emergency detection, navigation, and numerous location based services. Despite many wireless technologies and data-processing algorithms have been developed in recent years, indoor positioning is still a problem subject of intensive research. This paper deals with the active radio-frequency (RF) source localization in indoor scenarios. The localization task is carried out at the physical layer thanks to receiving sensor arrays which are deployed on the border of the surveillance region to record the signal emitted by the source. The localization problem is formulated as an imaging one by taking advantage of the inverse source approach. Different measurement configurations and data-processing/fusion strategies are examined to investigate their effectiveness in terms of localization accuracy under both line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line of sight (NLOS) conditions. Numerical results based on full-wave synthetic data are reported to support the analysis.

Exploitation of Ubiquitous Wi-Fi Devices as Building Blocks for Improvised Motion Detection Systems.

This article deals with a feasibility study on the detection of human movements in indoor scenarios based on radio signal strength variations. The sensing principle exploits the fact that the human body interacts with wireless signals, introducing variations of the radiowave fields due to shadowing and multipath phenomena. As a result, human motion can be inferred from fluctuations of radiowave power collected by a receiving terminal. In this paper, we investigate the potentialities of widely available wireless communication devices in order to develop an improvised motion detection system (IMDS). Experimental tests are performed in an indoor environment by using a smartphone as a Wi-Fi access point and a laptop with dedicated software as a receiver. Simple detection strategies tailored for real-time operation are implemented to process the received signal strength measurements. The achieved results confirm the potentialities of the simple system here proposed to reliably detect human motion in operational conditions.

An X-band radar system for bathymetry and wave field analysis in a harbour area.

Marine X-band radar based systems are well tested to provide information about sea state and bathymetry. It is also well known that complex geometries and non-uniform bathymetries provide a much bigger challenge than offshore scenarios. In order to tackle this issue a retrieval method is proposed, based on spatial partitioning of the data and the application of the Normalized Scalar Product (NSP), which is an innovative procedure for the joint estimation of bathymetry and surface currents. The strategy is then applied to radar data acquired around a harbour entrance, and results show that the reconstructed bathymetry compares well with ground truth data obtained by an echo-sounder campaign, thus proving the reliability of the whole procedure. The spectrum thus retrieved is then analysed to show the evidence of reflected waves from the harbour jetties, as confirmed by chain of hydrodynamic models of the sea wave field. The possibility of using a land based radar to reveal sea wave reflection is entirely new and may open up new operational applications of the system.

A simple strategy to mitigate the aliasing effect in X-band marine radar data: numerical results for a 2D case.

For moderate and high speed values of the sea surface current, an aliasing phenomenon, due to an under-sampling in the time-domain, can strongly affect the reconstruction of the sea surface elevation derived from X-band radar images. Here, we propose a de-aliasing strategy that exploits the physical information provided by the dispersion law for gravity waves. In particular, we utilize simplifying hypotheses and numerical tests with synthetic data are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented method.

Transport infrastructure surveillance and monitoring by electromagnetic sensing: the ISTIMES project.

The ISTIMES project, funded by the European Commission in the frame of a joint Call "ICT and Security" of the Seventh Framework Programme, is presented and preliminary research results are discussed. The main objective of the ISTIMES project is to design, assess and promote an Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)-based system, exploiting distributed and local sensors, for non-destructive electromagnetic monitoring of critical transport infrastructures. The integration of electromagnetic technologies with new ICT information and telecommunications systems enables remotely controlled monitoring and surveillance and real time data imaging of the critical transport infrastructures. The project exploits different non-invasive imaging technologies based on electromagnetic sensing (optic fiber sensors, Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite platform based, hyperspectral spectroscopy, Infrared thermography, Ground Penetrating Radar-, low-frequency geophysical techniques, Ground based systems for displacement monitoring). In this paper, we show the preliminary results arising from the GPR and infrared thermographic measurements carried out on the Musmeci bridge in Potenza, located in a highly seismic area of the Apennine chain (Southern Italy) and representing one of the test beds of the project.

Bathymetry determination via X-band radar data: a new strategy and numerical results.

This work deals with the question of sea state monitoring using marine X-band radar images and focuses its attention on the problem of sea depth estimation. We present and discuss a technique to estimate bathymetry by exploiting the dispersion relation for surface gravity waves. This estimation technique is based on the correlation between the measured and the theoretical sea wave spectra and a simple analysis of the approach is performed through test cases with synthetic data. More in detail, the reliability of the estimate technique is verified through simulated data sets that are concerned with different values of bathymetry and surface currents for two types of sea spectrum: JONSWAP and Pierson-Moskowitz. The results show how the estimated bathymetry is fairly accurate for low depth values, while the estimate is less accurate as the bathymetry increases, due to a less significant role of the bathymetry on the sea surface waves as the water depth increases.

A novel phase retrieval technique based on propagation diversity via a dielectric slab.

This paper deals with a novel technique to determine the far field of an aperture starting from the knowledge of two near-field intensity data sets collected over the same measurement plane. The diversity between the two intensity data sets is achieved by ensuring different conditions of the near field propagation between the aperture and the measurement plane. In particular, one measurement is performed under free-space propagation condition while the second one is performed by exploiting a dielectric slab, with known properties, filling partly the space between the aperture and the measurement plane. A phase retrieval technique, that faces a non linear inverse problem, is solved by assuming as unknown the plane wave spectrum of the aperture field. The feasibility of the novel approach is presented also in comparison with the usual near field phase retrieval technique exploiting measurements of the near field intensity over two scanning planes.

Shape reconstruction of metallic objects from intensity scattered field data only.

We address an inverse scattering problem using only amplitude information of the scattered field. In particular, we are concerned with the reconstruction of the shape of a metallic planar obstacle, located in a known plane (aperture plane), starting from the knowledge of the intensity of the scattered field over two measurement planes in near zone and parallel to the aperture plane, when a single-frequency incident plane wave is exploited. The formulation of the inverse scattering problem is given under the physical optics approximation, and thus the resulting phase retrieval problem is quadratic. This allows us to apply some phase retrieval techniques already developed for antenna diagnostics. Reconstruction results with synthetic data indicate the feasibility of the proposed approach.

Effects of uncertainty on background permittivity in one-dimensional linear inverse scattering.

We discuss the role of uncertainties in the knowledge of the background in inverse scattering for a buried object under the distorted Born approximation. In particular, we focus on the role played by inaccuracy in the knowledge of the dielectric permittivity of the host medium, with reference to both a lossless half-space and a lossless three-layered medium. This investigation allows us to show how reconstruction of an inhomogeneity in a three-layered medium is more critical than in the case of a half-space (two-layered) geometry.

One-dimensional inverse scattering with a Born model in a three-layered medium.

We deal with the inverse-scattering problem for a dielectric slab embedded in a three-layered medium starting from multifrequency scattered field data under the framework of the Born approximation. This allows us to state the problem as a linear inverse one, and the singular-value decomposition (SVD) of the relevant operator makes it possible to investigate and to solve it. In particular, the SVD tool allows an analysis of the reconstruction capabilities of the algorithm in terms of spatial variability of the unknowns that can be retrieved. The new contribution consists in an analysis of the role of the discontinuity of the dielectric properties between the second and the third medium. This analysis is performed with regard both to the class of retrievable dielectric profiles and to the model error deriving from the Born approximation and shows, finally, that this discontinuity can be troublesome.

Shape identification by physical optics: the two-dimensional TE case.

A method is provided for reconstruction of the shape of perfectly conducting objects in a homogeneous space starting from knowledge of the scattered far field under the incidence of TE-polarized plane waves. The Kirchhoff model of scattering permits linearization of the inverse problem, which is further simplified by adopting an asymptotic approximation. Thus the problem is tackled with an approach based on singular-value decomposition already developed for the TM case.

Convergence properties of a quadratic approach to the inverse-scattering problem.

The local-minima question that arises in the framework of a quadratic approach to inverse-scattering problems is investigated. In particular, a sufficient condition for the absence of local minima is given, and some guidelines to ensure the reliability of the algorithm are outlined for the case of data not belonging to the range of the relevant quadratic operator. This is relevant also when an iterated solution procedure based on a quadratic approximation of the electromagnetic scattering at each step is considered.