Tutorials
Tutorials are meant to compliment the OCEANS technical program.
If you are interested in the Tutorials section, please e-mail Alicia Lavín: alicia.lavin(at)st.ieo.es.
| 09:00 to 13:00 15:00 to 19:00 |
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T1. Ocean Observatories: A multichalenge to survey earth environmental process Juanjo Dañobeitia and Jordi Sorribas |
| 09:00 to 13:00 |
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T2. AUV Technology and Application Basics William J. Kirkwood |
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T3. Signal waveform design for underwater acoustic communications Charalampos C. Tsimenidis and Bayan S. Sharif |
| 15:00 to 19:00 |
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T5. Technologies for monitoring marine organisms and hazards Jaume Piera |
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T6. The Stochastic Matched Filter and its applications to detection and denoising Philippe Courmontagne |
T1. OCEAN OBSERVATORIES: A MULTICHALLENGE TO SURVEY EARTH ENVIRONMENTAL PROCESS
Oceans have a significant influence on the Earth’s environment, and climate. Therefore understanding the link between natural and anthropogenic processes and ocean circulation is essential for predicting the future changes in Earth’s climate. More specifically, the interactions between ocean, biosphere and geosphere (lithosphere, and solid earth below), leading to natural hazards (e.g., tsunami, seismicity, submarine landslides) or environmental changes (e.g., sea-level, ecosystem changes, greenhouse gas budget) is one of the main scientific challenges for the next few decades.
To accomplish this goal to set up a network of seafloor observatories is a challenge to measure a wide range of long time-series of critical parameters. These observatories will have power and communication capabilities, and provide support for spatially distributed sensing systems and mobile platforms. Sensors and instruments will cover the whole water column, potentially extending the observation capabilities from below the seafloor up to the air-sea interface. Deep sea observatories will also be a powerful complement to satellite measurement systems by providing the ability to collect vertically distributed measurements within the water column for use with the spatial measurements acquired by satellites while also providing the capability to calibrate remotely sensed satellite measurements.
To build a network of multidisciplinary submarine observatories is an initiative already working at European Level, under the funded projects ESONET (Network of Excellence) and EMSO (European Multidisciplinary Seafloor Observatory) (http://www.esonet-emso.org). In this context the Spanish participation is leading by the CSIC (UTM, ICM) and by the Polytechnic University of Catalunya (Sarti Group). The Spanish contribution for such initiative is focus on the implementation of strategies, logistics and the operational aspect concerning cabled and stand alone observatories, as a well as the interoperability and synchronization in Networking of Marine Sensors.The CSIC and the UPC have actively participated in the deployment of the GEOSTAR Lab (stand alone observatory), within the LIDO demo mission, and the set up of a testing laboratory offshore Vilanova, named OBSEA.
The Scope of this tutorial will focus on the implementation of submarine laboratories all over the world in the last few years, the selected sites, and the new opportunities arisen to Earth and Ocean scientists to study multiple and interrelated processes over time scales ranging from seconds to decades. For multidisciplinary studies as Role of the Ocean in Climate, Global Change and Physical Oceanography, Earth sciences, geohazards and seafloor interface, The Marine Ecosystem: Dynamics and Biodiversity, Non-Living resources, etc.
The tutorial will include a practical “session” on how to integrate the laboratory’s component supervision with the acquired data with OpenSource solutions as the first stage of the data quality control process.
We will include topics as:
1. Observatory design, cabled and stand alone
2. Logistics for deployment/recovery/maintenance
3. Communications. Network and Data management
4. Examples of working laboratories; cabled (OBSEA), and stand alone (GEOSTAR)
Juanjo Dañobeitia
Position:
Profesor in Marine Geophysics. Spanish Research Council (CSIC).
Director of Marine Technological Unit (UTM) Barcelona, Spain.
Interests:
Seismic reflection and refractions studies, Oceanic Crust, Continental Margins processes, Marine Technology, Polar Resarch studies.
Experience:
Over 25 years of experience in management of national and international research projects.
Lecturing & Research: Director of 5 Theses, and Master thesis, lecturing at University of Barcelona (1988-90), and Politechnical University of Catalonia (1992-94). Author or co-author of about 100 referred publications. Participating and/or leading several cooperative national & international projects in marine research (Atlantic, Mediterranean, Pacific, Indian oceans).
National & International Boards: National Science Plan Committee (2004:07); President of the Advisory Committee for construction of Oceanographic Research vessel Sarmiento de Gamboa, Member of the Advisory Scientific Committee for the Prestige disaster, Secretary of Solid Earth Geophysics (European Geophysical Society) sub-section Marine Geophysics. 1993-99; InterRidge Steering Committee (1995:99); Executive Marine Board from ESF (1999-2003); ODP Panel Pollution & Safety (PPSP) (1999-03), CSIC Natural Resources Board (2003:08)
Recent Activities: As a director of UTM is responsible of Large Scale Facilities (Research Vessels and Polar Stations) to provide at national level the logistics and technological support for marine and polar research. Spanish leader in the set-up and installation of a network of submarine laboratories across Europe, within European projects ESONET (European Seafloor Observatories Network) and EMSO (European Multidisciplinary Seafloor Observatories), and setting up an early warning system for tsunamis NEAREST. All financed by European Union funds.
Jordi Sorribas
Position:
Marine Geologist. Master in Information and Communications Technology. Spanish Research Council (CSIC).
Head of Telematics Group of Marine Technological Unit (UTM) Barcelona, Spain.
Interests:
Distributed Data Acquisition Systems. Data management and cyberinfraetsructure for oceanographic vessels. Network Management Systems for data acquisition sensor networking in unattended and marine environments.
Experience:
Over 20 years of experience in data management in geosciences and marine environments.
Lecturing & Research: Lecturing at University of Barcelona (1992-97). Author or co-author of about 30 publications and presentations on marine data management. Participating in several cooperative national & international projects in marine research.
Recent Activities: Since 1997 is at the front of the computing and communications team of the Marine Technology Unit of the Spanish National Science Council (CSIC).
During this time has developed scientific software and data acquisition devices for research ships and polar stations using Object Oriented Analysis and development techniques with C++ and Java over multi platform environments, maintaining a very narrow relationship with scientist that work and uses these systems.
Since the middle of 2001 collaborates with the Electronic Engineering Department of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Vilanova i la Geltrú, developing new acquisition devices for marine sciences, and preparing a Phd in Telematics on Distributed Data Acquisition Systems in Remote and Marine Environments. He is involved in two European Projects related to Submarine Observatories as ESONET and EMSO.
T2. AUV Technology and Application Basics
AUV Application Basics is a short course intended to provide an overview of basic AUV technologies and operations. The objective is to establish a basic understanding of what currently available AUVs for oceanographic applications. The attendee will gain basic understanding of AUV types, technologies, terminology, and navigation techniques, including discussion of the comparative strengths of AUVs and alternative methods of data collection. The attendee will also be provided an understanding of tradeoffs in AUV operations, including power estimation, endurance considerations, and mission structure to acquire the desired data sets. Key points are illustrated through real world applications and results from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s (MBARI) Dorado AUV and other AUV operations. Topics include: Basic AUV technology, AUV at-sea Operation, Payload Considerations, Mission Planning, Upper and Mid-Water AUV missions, Benthic and Mapping AUV missions, Data Collection and Reduction, AUV Integration into Sampling Networks, and a look at coming AUV advances. The interactive format, using the materials provided, allows the attendee discussion time for relevance and demonstration purposes regarding real or potential AUV plans.
William J. Kirkwood
Bill is a Senior Research and Development Engineer at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) located in Monterey Bay, California. Bill has a BS in Mechanical Engineering and a MS in Computer Science which he has applied to controls and automation of electromechanical systems and robotics since 1978. Bill has been with MBARI for 19 years as a lead mechanical engineer and program manager developing the Tiburon remotely operated vehicle and Dorado class autonomous underwater vehicles. Bill’s current focus is development of underwater instrumentation for science studying hydrates and ocean acidification issues associated with anthropogenic CO2.
Abstract
The tutorial will cover the design of signalling waveforms that are suitable for utilisation in underwater acoustic (UA) modems. These will include PN sequences with low auto and crosscorrelation properties, chirp design, in conjunction with pulse shaping and modulation schemes such as orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDM), direct sequence and multicarrier code division multiple access (DS- and MC-CDMA). The tutorial will also address underwater channel modelling and simulation methodologies that are useful in evaluating "dry" performance of UA systems. Furthermore, the design of receiver algorithms will be considered that utilise adaptive receive arrays, carrier-phase and symbol timing recovery, Doppler compensation and multi-user detection methodologies. The tutorial is suitable for modem engineers with limited or no experience in this area to assist them in the design of UA based communication systems.
Extended Summary
In recent years, there has been an immense interest in developing underwater acoustic communication systems, most of which are related to remote control and telemetry applications. Other applications include ocean-bottom survey and collection of scientific data acquired by subsea sensors without the need for retrieving the equipment. However, for all these applications the principal function is to achieve reliable communication both in point-to-point links, and in network scenarios. In practice, the only feasible method to achieve sub-sea communications is by means of acoustic signals. Such acoustic links are exposed to adverse physical phenomena governing acoustic wave propagation in the sea. These include ambient noise, frequency-dependent attenuation, temperature and pressure variations, reverberation, and extended multi-path. Any successful acoustic modem design must consider all these effects in order to select an appropriate configuration for system-related parameters. The transmit power level and operating frequency must be considered in conjunction with the ambient noise and transmission range, the utilized modulation scheme, data rate, and the level of diversity must properly match the expected channel conditions related to time and frequency dispersion. Another key task is the choice of multipleaccess strategy. The focus of this tutorial will be to investigate the design and analysis of receiver structures that employ well-established communication techniques, such as spatial and time filtering, in combination with the spread-spectrum principle. The presented receiver structures will provide a sound balance between efficient transmission and multiple-access capability.
Overview of the Underwater Acoustic Channel
A comprehensive review of the principles of propagation in multipath channels will be introduced whereby special emphasis will be placed in the description of the shallow-water acoustic channel. Terms such as rms delay spread, coherence bandwidth, Doppler spread and coherence time will be introduced to characterize the underwater channel and typical values for these parameters will be given derived from experimental data. The tutorial deals with both the characterisation and modelling as well as with the laboratory simulation of underwater acoustic based communication channels. Simulations can be used to evaluate the performance of receiver algorithms in communication systems, and thus avoid the costly process of physically conducting field trials on the candidate systems. Our approach to the problem will be to predict by means of computer simulation the impact of the channel on the desired transmitted waveform. Emphasis will be focused on the simulation of channels that exhibit both static and dynamic multipath-delay profiles. For dynamic channels, Rayleigh and Rician envelope variations will be mainly considered but also autoregressive modelling of the shallow water channel based on experimental data.
Signal Waveform Design
The tutorial will address issues related to the design of signaling waveforms that are suitable for utilization in underwater acoustic (UA) modems. These will include the design and generation of pseudo-noise (PN) sequences with low auto and cross-correlation properties that are employed in synchronization and training of the adaptive algorithms. Additionally, the design of Doppler tolerant chips will be discussed in conjunction with pulse shaping and multi-layered modulation schemes such as coded orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDM), direct sequence and multicarrier code division multiple access (DS- and MC-CDMA).
Adaptive Algorithms for Single-Element Receiver Design
Receiver architectures will be diagrammatically introduced and discussed that are suitable for the underwater environment, whereby the differences and similarities to the radio wireless receivers will be highlighted. The minimum mean squared (MMSE) based receiver will be introduced for both single and multipleelement reception. The advantages and disadvantages resulting from the employment of this receiver in conjunction with adaptive spatial-diversity processing and adaptive equalization will be investigated.
Phase Tracking and Doppler Compensation
Furthermore, carrier phase recovery, timing and frame synchronization algorithms of both theoretical and practical interest will be introduced and discussed in detail along with provision of simulated and experimental results. Emphasis will be placed on Doppler compensation methods that are essential in receiver structures for underwater communications. Block and iterative based methodologies will be introduced and their performance will be demonstrated using experimental results.
Multi-channel Receivers
The use of spatial diversity is essential in underwater communications due to the low operational signal-to-noise ratio. Therefore, multi-element receiver structures that employ diversity combining methods will be introduced in this part and analysis will be provided and extended that is previously only available for mobile-radio channels and single-element reception. The tutorial will develop the use of spatial and temporal diversity combining techniques in conjunction with the DS/MC-CDMA principle and algorithms will be discussed that are required for initial detection of users, estimation of carrier phase and timing, Doppler compensation and efficient detection.
BIOGRAPHIES
Charalampos C. Tsimenidis is a Senior Lecturer in Signal Processing for Communications in the School of Electrical, Electronic, and Computer Engineering. He received his MSc with distinction and PhD from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1999 and 2002, respectively. His main research interests are in the area adaptive array receivers for wireless communications including demodulation algorithms and protocol design for underwater acoustic channels. He has published over 100 conference and journal papers. During the last ten years he has made contributions in the area of receiver design to several European funded research projects including LOTUS, SWAN, and ACME.
Bayan S. Sharif is Professor of Digital Communications and Head of the School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering. He received the bachelor and doctorate degrees from Queen's University of Belfast and Ulster University, N. Ireland, in 1984 and 1988, respectively. He then held a Research Fellowship at Queen's University of Belfast before he was appointed as Lecturer at Newcastle University in 1990, and then as Senior Lecturer and Professor in Digital Communications in 1999 and 2000, respectively. Prof. Sharif has research interests in digital communications with a focus on wireless receiver structures and optimisation of wireless networks. He has published over 200 journal and conference papers, and held UK and EU research grants in digital communications, underwater acoustics and signal processing worth over £3M. He is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the IET.
The observation of the ocean from space is now a common tool for many oceanographic studies, from local to large scales. The availability of satellites to provide synoptic information of the ocean surface is now more than thirty years old. After the initial sea surface temperature maps, these last decades have seen the appearance of an increasing number of satellites delivering new ocean variables with increased quality, resolution and repetitivity. The use of infrared or colour images to interpret sparse in situ information was crucial in the early eighties to understand the role of mesoscale in the ocean dynamics. A crucial milestone was the launch of the first radar altimeters that opened the door to real quantitative ocean remote sensing, and to efficiently feed the present operational oceanography systems. An overview will be given of the principles and main features of ocean remote sensing.
SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity, European Space Agency) is the first satellite mission addressing the challenge of measuring sea surface salinity and moisture of land from space. It uses an L-band microwave interferometric radiometer with aperture synthesis (MIRAS) that generates brightness temperature images, from which both geophysical variables (key for the understanding of the water cycle in our planet) are derived.
This tutorial presents the principles of operation of this pioneer instrument (that for the first time applies to Earth observation the same approach used in radioastronomy), and the algorithmic approach implemented for the retrieval of salinity from MIRAS observations. The retrieval of salinity requires very demanding performances of the instrument in terms of calibration and stability, as the sensitivity of brightness temperature to salinity, even at this optimal frequency (1.14 GHz in a band protected against artificial emissions), is very low. SMOS aims at delivering global and continued salinity maps with an accuracy and resolution adequate for large scale oceanographic and climate studies.
A review will be made of the different modules implemented in the SMOS salinity processor, to take into account the several physical processes that impact on the ocean surface L-band emission and how this emission is modified until reaching the MIRAS antenna. New models had to be designed or adapted (from other frequencies) and tested by the development team (a consortium of European research laboratories and companies) due to the relatively few previous works in this field.
SMOS was launched on November 2, 2009 and its commissioning phase was completed by end of May 2010. Data are now being distributed to all registered users, while the different teams continue working in improving the processing of the different data levels. SMOS is an exploratory mission that demonstrates new technology, so the processing algorithms are expected to be evolving until the end of the mission while paving the path for future salinity missions. A general data reprocessing is scheduled for summer 2011, and every year from then. The tutorial will also include an analysis and demonstrations of the different kinds of problems encountered in the SMOS salinity retrieval, and how are they being addressed in order to reach the mission scientific requirements.
Summary CV
Dr. Jérôme Gourrion otained B.Sc. (1989) and a Ph.D (2003) in Physical Oceanography in the Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Brest, France. He is Research Scientist at the Physical Oceanography Department of the Institut de Ciències del Mar (Spanish Research Council, CSIC), Barcelona. He has experience in data analysis of fluxes and Remote Sensing observations near the Air-Sea interface. During his PhD he worked on sea state analyses to improve sea level estimates in altimetry. During 2005-2006, he has been involved with IFREMER in preparing the validation of SMOS salinity products for the Centre Aval de Traitement des Données SMOS (CATDS) using in-situ data. In 2007, he joined the Barcelona Expert Center (SMOS-BEC) to work on the generation and validation of the CP34 (Spanish Processing Center for SMOS Level 3 and 4 products) global salinity products. Since SMOS launch, he has been strongly involved in the analysis of the first data to progressively improve the quality of the retrieved sea surface salinity.
Marine environments are influenced by a wide diversity plankton organisms and substances suspended in the water column. Real-time measurements of such organisms and substances, across a range of spatial scales are required to understand adequately ecosystem dynamics or monitor those components that may have adverse effects on human health and ecosystems. Many aspects of how plankton communities, nutrients or harmful substances are distributed in the water body, and how they modify their distribution due transport processes remain poorly understood, in large part because we lack critical observational tools. Traditional organism-level sampling strategies are not amenable to high-frequency, long duration implementations. Methods such as conventional microscopic or chemical analysis, for instance, are prohibitively labour intensive and time consuming. In recent years, significant technological advancements have been made for the detection and analysis of organisms and marine hazards. In particular, sensors deployed on a variety of mobile and fixed-point observing platforms provide a valuable means to characterize plankton dynamics and assess hazards. Progress in sensor technology is expected to depend on the development of small-scale sensor technologies with a high sensitivity and specificity towards target compounds or organisms. A variety of platforms are needed to support sensing systems in the ocean, including multiplex and integrated observational technologies. Instruments on satellites, airborne or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can yield broad spatial synoptic measurements of thesurface ocean (with different resolution in each case), but are of limited use in the vertical dimension. Underwater sensor networks with profiling moorings are essential to resolve different physical, chemical, and biological processes that occur between the sea surface and the sea floor and cover a wide range of temporal variability (from short-lived episodic events to climatic trends). Mobile platforms (floats, gliders, and autonomous underwater vehicles -AUVs-) with appropriate sensors provide measurements of spatial variability to complement the fixed sites.
Future developments will include the integration of existing methods into complex and operational sensing systems for a comprehensive strategy for long-term monitoring. The combination of sensor techniques on all scales will remain crucial for the demand of large spatial and temporal coverage. The amount of data provided for the different type of observational platforms require the implementation of automatic methods for analysing the data. During the last years different signal or image processing methods has been developed for automatic target identification or classification.
The tutorial will review the state-of-the-art of sensors, platforms technologies, signal and image processing methods for the detection and identification of organisms and harmful substances in the ocean and coastal environments. The review will analyse current gaps and future demands, particularly on the need for new sensors to detect marine hazards at different scales in autonomous real or near-real time mode, and the observational strategies to obtain high resolution measurements on a large spatial and temporal coverage.
The tutorial is directed mainly toward specialists on observational technologies and marine scientists that are interested on marine technologies applied to marine biological research, but can be also useful for different users involved in environmental monitoring and also modellers interested on assimilating marine biological data.
Tutorial Outline
• Sampling requirements for monitoring plankton organisms and marine hazards
• Platforms
• Sensoring systems
• Based on molecular properties
• Based on on optical properties (bulk or cell)
• Data processing and analysis methods
• Automated taxonomic classification
• Target identification
• Future trends on observational technologies
Jaume Piera Short CV
Jaume Piera is B.S. in Telecommunications Engineering, Technical University of Catalonia (1991); B.S. in Biology, University of Barcelona (1998); Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences University of Girona (2002). From 2001 to 2004, he was Lecturer in the Department of Signal Theory and Communications at the Technical University of Catalonia. Since 2005 he is a Scientist of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) working in the Marine Technology Unit in Barcelona (Spain).
Over 20 years of experience in multidisciplinary research programs his research interests are focused on Information Technologies applied to Marine Biology and particularly on Hyperspectral Technologies, Autonomous Platforms, Signal Processing and Bio-optical based Pattern Recognition Techniques.
At present he is involved in different projects related to underwater sensors networks (EMSO, ESONET and OBSEA), and he is leading the development of a new profiling system for concurrent characterization of physical and biological processes at small scale (ANERIS).
Selected publications:
Aymerich, I. F., Piera, J., Soria-Frisch, A., Cros, L. (2009). A rapid technique for classifying phytoplankton fluorescence spectra based on self-organizing maps. Applied Spectroscopy, 63 : 716 -726.
Piera, J.; Parisi, V.; Garc?-Ladona, E.; Lombarte, A.; Recasens, L. and Cabestany, J. (2005) Otolith shape feature extraction oriented to automatic classification with open distributed data. Marine and Freshwater Research, 56(5): 795-804.
Piera, J.; Quesada, R. and Catalan, J. (2006) Estimation of non-local turbulent mixing parameters derived fom microstructure profiles. Journal of Marine Research. 64: 21-43.
Andreatta, S.; Wallinger, M. M.; Piera, J.; Catalan, J.; Psenner, R.; Hofer, J. S. and R. Sommaruga. (2004). Tools for the discrimination and analysis of lake bacterioplankton subgroups measured by flow cytometry in a high-resolution depth profile. Aquatic Microbial Ecology. 36:107-115.
Abstract
In several domains of signal processing, such as detection or de-noising, it may be interesting to provide a second-moment characterization of a noise-corrupted signal in terms of uncorrelated random variables. Doing so, the noisy data could be described by its expansion into a weighted sum of known vectors by uncorrelated random variables. Depending on the choice of the basis vectors, some random variables are carrying more signal of interest information than noise ones. This is the case, for example, when a signal disturbed by a white noise is expanded using the Karhunen-Loève expansion. In these conditions, it is possible either to approximate the signal of interest by keeping only its associated random variables, or to detect a signal in a noisy environment with an analysis of the random variable power. The purpose of this tutorial is to present such an expansion, available for both the additive and multiplicative noise cases, and its application to detection and de-noising. This noisy random signal expansion is known as the stochastic matched filter, where the basis vectors are chosen so as to maximize the signal to noise ratio after processing.
This tutorial is divided into three parts:
- The first part concerns the theory itself: the stochastic matched filter theory will be described for 1-D discrete-time signals and its extension to 2-D discrete-space signals. Furthermore, a study will be realized on two different noise cases: the white noise case and the speckle noise case.
- In the second part, the stochastic matched filter will be described in a detection context and this method will be confronted with signals resulting from underwater acoustics. The results obtained are then compared with those resulting from the classical matched filter theory and from some classical detectors (energy detector, Teager- Kaiser energy operator, Eckart filter, …).
- In the last part, the stochastic matched filter will be presented in a de-noising context. The de-noising being performed by a limitation to order Q of the noisy data expansion, two criteria to determine Q will be introduced. Experimental results on real SAS data are given to evaluate the performances of such an approach. Furthermore, in order to bypass stationary assumptions, some approaches aiming at coupling the Stochastic Matched Filter with time-frequency techniques will be described.
This tutorial is intended for people or scientists connected with 1-D/2-D signal or array processing, and interested to have a fly-over about these effective methods.
Presenter’s Bio - Philippe Courmontagne
Philippe Courmontagne was born in 1970. He received the Ph. D. degree in Physics at the University of Toulon (France) in 1997. In 1999, he became Professor in a French electronic engineering school: the Institut Supérieur de l’Électronique et du Numérique (ISEN Toulon, France), in the field of signal processing and image processing. He joined in 2001 the Provence Materials and Microelectronics Laboratory (L2MP UMR CNRS 6137), which is a unit of the French national research center (CNRS). In 2005, he obtained his Habilitation (HDR - Habilitation to Supervise Research) for his works in the field of noisy signal expansion. In 2007, he has been elected to the degree of IEEE Senior Member in recognition of professional standing for his works in the field of signal de-noising (SAR, SAS images), signal detection in noisy environment and signal transmission.