MOOC course on SAR Data Processing and its Applications
Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS) under Indian Space Research Organisation, Department of Space, Government of India is a premier Training, Educational and Research Institute established for capacity building in the fields of SAR Data Processing and its Applications. The Institute is running many on-campus short and long term capacity building programmes.

To further enhance the outreach of geospatial technology, IIRS, ISRO offers Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) for national and international participants. MOOC is based on the principle of self-paced user centric learning and aims to link learners from across the globe with educators and provides user and discussion forums to support interactions among students in collaborative learning platform. IIRS MOOC’s aims to enhance the participant’s capabilities related to the use of geospatial and Earth observation technologies and its applications in various thematic domain. The learning contents for MOOC are delivered by internationally renowned Subject Matter Experts and includes customized video sessions, 2D and 3D animations, SCROM packages, lecture notes and presentations as study material.

The advancement of earth observation has opened new avenues of research in the field of earth sciences. With the technological advancements in geo-information sciences, remote sensing has become an effective method for the detection and investigation of various features. The visible and infra-red regions are known as optical regions, and the microwave region (1mm - 1m) is considered a non-optical region. Systems operating in the optical region are limited by the availability of sunlight and interference with atmospheric conditions such as haze and cloud cover, especially in tropical regions. Whereas Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is an active system that can image both day and night, in almost all weather conditions. Another benefit is that SAR sensors are sensitive to the “roughness” and “wetness” of the target surface, hence offering a unique insight into observing and monitoring the earth's surface features. The advantage of subsurface penetration and other unique capabilities have been extensively used in various applications ranging from agriculture, landslides, snow-related studies, floods, forestry, geological studies, land subsidence, etc.

Recent SAR systems provide fully polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) data. The PolSAR system offers an increased number of independent observations in comparison to traditional single-polarization radars. Interferometric SAR has shown the ability to have precise elevation at the level of a few meters and ground subsidence on the mm scale. Many space agencies have developed and launched advanced SAR sensors and provide tools and software for data processing for the convenience of students and researchers. Many more SAR satellite systems are planned to be launched in the future, such as NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, ESA's P-band Biomass mission, DLR's L-band Tandem-L mission, etc. will provide high-quality quality SAR data for various applications.

Objective: The overall objective of this course is to make awareness among users/researchers/professionals about the concept of SAR Remote Sensing and disseminate knowledge and practical uses of the thematic applications of SAR Remote Sensing.

Target participants of the course: Although this course has been designed keeping in mind the target participants as remote sensing professionals, beginners in SAR remote sensing can also attend this course. This course is free and open for national and international participants.

This course will cover fundamentals aspects of SAR Remote Sensing and its application. There are a total of 10 lectures scheduled. Each lecture will be of 20-30 minutes duration. The list of the reference material (that contains the journal articles, names of the books, and links to online tutorials) for each lecture will also be provided. The evaluation/assessment of each lecture will be done from 4-5 objective-type questions.

The topics which will be covered in this course are the following.

S. No. Lecture Title Faculty Duration
1 Basics of SAR Remote Sensing Dr. Shashi Kumar 20 to 30 minutes
2 SAR Data Processing Mr. Ashish Joshi
3 Emerging Techniques and Applications of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Dr. Shashi Kumar
4 SAR Data Analysis for Urban Applications Dr. Sandeep Maithani
5 Applications of SAR in Forestry Dr. Hitendra Padalia
6 Agricultural Applications of SAR remote sensing Dr. Dipanwita Haldar
7 The utilization of SAR data in Hydrological Studies Dr. Praveen K. Thakur
8 Geological Applications of SAR Remote Sensing Dr. R. S. Chatterjee
9 SAR Remote Sensing for Ocean Studies Dr. Debashish Mitra
10 Evaluating the Utilisation of SAR data in the Hazards of Land Subsidence Mr. Hari Shankar


Dates: Course in English: April 4 - May 3, 2022, 10:30hr (UTC) [or 16:00hr Indian Standard Time]

Language: English.

Registration: Please click here to register for the ISRO training. Registration is open until the day of training or until the maximum capacity of the course has been reached.

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SAR Data Processing and its Applications

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