AN ICE-MOTION TRACKING SYSTEM AT THE ALASKA SAR FACILITY

An operational system for extracting ice-motion information from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery is being developed for installation at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, as part of the Alaska SAR Facility. This Geophysical Processing System (GPS) will derive ice-motion information by automated analysis of image sequences acquired by radars on the European ERS-1, Japanese ERS-1, and Canadian RADARSAT remote sensing satellites. The algorithm consists of a novel combination of feature-based and area-based techniques for the tracking of ice floes that undergo translation and rotation between imaging passes. The algorithm development was motivated by the requirement for a highly reliable and efficient operational system for routine production of a regular gridded matrix of ice-motion vectors. Additional complexity in image segmentation is added by the unique characteristics of the SAR data, such as speckle noise, large dynamic range, and radiometric distortions. The system performs automatic selection of the image pairs for input to the matching routines using an ice-motion estimator. The system is designed to have a daily throughput of ten image pairs. This paper describes the GPS system, including an overview of the ice motion tracking algorithm, the system architecture, and the ice-motion products which will be available for distribution to geophysical data users. © 1990 IEEE