Dr. Carlos Lopez-Martinez of UPC, Barcelona, Spain

Summary: Nowadays, many spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems
acquiere polarimetric data. These range from systems presenting fully polarimetric
acquisition modes, as for instance TerraSAR-X (X-Band), RADARSAT-2 (C-Band), ALOS-2
(L-band), SAOCOM (L-band) or the future missions BIOMASS (P-band) or NISAR (L&Sbands), to systems presenting dual or compact polarimetric modes, as for example
Sentinel-1a&b (C-band dual polarimetric) or RCM (C-band).
Respect to single-channel SAR data, Polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) data allows an improved
characterization of the targets being observed, especially in terms of their geometry
and their water content, hence offering a better physical description.
The objective of this presentation is to introduce, in a didactic and enjoyable way, the
concept of polarization and the basics of PolSAR, how to interpret the physical
information contained in PolSAR data, the particularities of dual or compact PolSAR
data compared to fully polarimetric data and the main applications, all of them with
examples based on real PolSAR data from the main spaceborne systems.
Presentation objectives:
 What is polarimetry?
 Conceptual description of wave polarimetry
 Conceptual description of scattering polarimetry
 To know the physical interpretation of PolSAR data
 To know the past, present and future polarimetric spaceborne, airborne and ground-based SAR sensors

Biography:

Bio: Orcid ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1366-9446
Dr. Carlos Lopez-Martinez (S’97-M’04-SM’11) received the MSc. degree in electrical
engineering and the Ph.D. degree from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya,
Barcelona, Spain, in 1999 and 2003, respectively.
Dr. Lopez-Martinez is Associate Professor in the area of remote sensing and microwave
technology in the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain. He has a large
professional international experience at DLR (Germany), at the University of Rennes 1
(France), and as a group leader of the Remote Sensing and Natural Resources
Modelling team in the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (Luxembourg).
His research interests include Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) theory, statistics and
applications, multidimensional SAR, radar polarimetry, physical parameter inversion,
advanced digital signal processing, estimation theory, and harmonic analysis.
Dr. López-Martínez has authored more than 200 articles in journals, books, and
conference proceedings, and received the EUSAR 2002 Conference Student Prize Paper
Award, co-authored the paper awarded with the EUSAR 2012 Conference First Place
Student Paper Award, and received the IEEE-GRSS 2013 GOLD Early Career Award. Dr.
López-Martínez has broad academic teaching experience from bachelor, master, and
Ph.D. levels to advanced technical tutorials presented at international conferences and
space and research institutions worldwide. He is an associate editor of the IEEE-JSTARS
journal and the MDPI Remote Sensing, acting also as invited guest editor for several
special issues. He has collaborated in the Spanish PAZ and the ESA’s SAOCOM-CS
missions, in the proposal of the Parsifal mission and he is member of the ESA’s Sentinel
ROSE-L Mission Advisory Group. He was appointed vice-president of the IEEE-GRSS
Spanish chapter, and in 2016 he became its secretary and treasurer. From 2011 Dr.
López-Martínez collaborates with the IEEE-GRSS Globalization initiative in Latin
America, contributing to the creation of the IEEE-GRSS Chilean chapter and the
organization of the 2020 LAGIRSS conference, being appointed as Latin America liaison
in 2019. He is also co-chair of the Tutorial Technical Committee of the Indian 2020
InGARSS conference

Email:

Address:Barcelona, Cataluna, Spain