Progress in Environmental Evolvement and Environmental Archaeology Study in the Yangtze Delta （China）

A review was conducted on the environmental evolvement and environmental archaeological research since the 1980s in the Yangtze Delta. Former environmental evolvement and environmental archaeological research results can be summed up into 4 aspects： 1） Formation and evolution of the Taihu Lake; 2） Transgression and sea-level changes in the Holocene epoch; 3） Reconstruction of the pre-historical environment; and 4） Impacts of environmental variations on the rise and fall of human civilization （formation of the cultural interruptions）. Based on this review, some limitations in the present research methods and possible outcomes are pointed out in this paper.     

Bringing GPS into harsh environments for fully automated deformation monitoring

Engineering projects that require deformation monitoring frequently utilize geodetic sensors to measure displacements of target points located in the deformation zone. In situations where control stations and targets are separated by a kilometer or more, GPS can offer higher precision position updates at more frequent intervals than can normally be achieved using total station technology. For large-scale deformation projects requiring the highest precision, it is therefore advisable to use a combination of the two sensors. In response to the need for high precision, continuous GPS position updates in harsh deformation monitoring environments, a software has been developed that employs triple-differenced carrier-phase measurements in a delayed-state Kalman filter. Two data sets were analyzed to test the capabilities of the software. In the first test, a GPS antenna was displaced using a translation stage to mimic slow deformation. In the second test, data collected at a large open pit mine were processed. It was shown that the delayed-state Kalman filter developed could detect millimeter-level displacements of a GPS antenna. The actual precision attained depends upon the amount of process noise infused at each epoch to accommodate the antenna displacements. Higher process noise values result in quicker detection times, but at the same time increase the noise in the solutions. A slow, 25 mm displacement was detected within 30 min of the full displacement with sigma values in E, N and U of ±10 mm or better. The same displacement could also be detected in less than 5 h with sigma values in E, N and U of ±5 mm or better. The software works best for detecting long period deformations (e.g., 20 mm per day or less) for which sigma values of 1–2 mm are attained in all three solution components. It was also shown that the triple-differenced carrier-phase observation can be used to significantly reduce the effects of residual tropospheric delay that would normally plague double-differenced observations in harsh GPS environments.

Geodetic intersection on the ellipsoid

Through each of two known points on the ellipsoid a geodesic is passing in a known azimuth. We solve the problem of intersection of the two geodesics. The solution for the latitude is obtained as a closed formula for the sphere plus a small correction, of the order of the eccentricity of the ellipsoid, which is determined by numerical integration. The solution is iterative. Once the latitude is obtained, the longitude is determined without iteration.     

Using GPS multipath to measure soil moisture fluctuations: initial results

Measurements of soil moisture are important for studies of climate and weather forecasting, flood prediction, and aquifer recharge studies. Although soil moisture measurement networks exist, most are sparsely distributed and lack standardized instrumentation. Measurements of soil moisture from satellites have extremely large spatial footprints (40–60 km). A methodology is described here that uses existing networks of continuously-operating GPS receivers to measure soil moisture fluctuations. In this technique, incoming signals are reflected off and attenuated by the ground before reception by the GPS receiver. These multipath reflections directly affect signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) data routinely collected by GPS receivers, creating amplitude variations that are a function of ground reflectivity and therefore soil moisture content. After describing this technique, multipath reflection amplitudes at a GPS site in Tashkent, Uzbekistan are compared to estimates of soil moisture from the Noah land surface model. Although the GPS multipath amplitudes and the land surface model are uncalibrated, over the 70-day period studied, they both rise sharply following each rainfall event and slowly decrease over a period of ∼10 days.     

Cross-scale analysis of cluster correspondence using different operational neighborhoods

Cluster correspondence analysis examines the spatial autocorrelation of multi-location events at the local scale. This paper argues that patterns of cluster correspondence are highly sensitive to the definition of operational neighborhoods that form the spatial units of analysis. A subset of multi-location events is examined for cluster correspondence if they are associated with the same operational neighborhood. This paper discusses the construction of operational neighborhoods for cluster correspondence analysis based on the spatial properties of the underlying zoning system and the scales at which the zones are aggregated into neighborhoods. Impacts of this construction on the degree of cluster correspondence are also analyzed. Empirical analyses of cluster correspondence between paired vehicle theft and recovery locations are conducted on different zoning methods and across a series of geographic scales and the dynamics of cluster correspondence patterns are discussed.      

Income distribution dynamics and cross-region convergence in Europe

This paper presents a continuous version of the model of distribution dynamics to analyse the transition dynamics and implied long-run behaviour of the EU-27 NUTS-2 regions over the period 1995–2003. It departs from previous research in two respects: first, by introducing kernel estimation and three-dimensional stacked conditional density plots as well as highest density regions plots for the visualisation of the transition function, based on Hyndman et al. (J Comput Graph Stat 5(4):315–336, 1996), and second, by combining Getis’ spatial filtering view with kernel estimation to explicitly account for the spatial dimension of the growth process. The results of the analysis indicate a very slow catching-up of the poorest regions with the richer ones, a process of shifting away of a small group of very rich regions, and highlight the importance of geography in understanding regional income distribution dynamics.

Low multipath antennas for GNSS-based attitude determination systems applied to high-altitude platforms

High-altitude platforms (HAPs) are a flexible and attractive technology for providing innovative wireless services. These aerial platforms can be successfully employed for mobile or broadband communications and for disaster monitoring or response. However, one of the open issues is whether HAP stations can provide reliable services without temporal outages owing to stratospheric winds that can cause positional and attitude instabilities thus affecting the communication system operation. To counteract this issue, one possible solution is to use reconfigurable antennas whose pointing direction can be adjusted depending on the platform spatial orientation. However, this would require real-time three-axial attitude data. As a possible solution, this paper will review the potential of GNSS-based attitude determination systems with reference to HAP stations. In particular, it will be shown how the use of a particular class of low multipath and lightweight antennas can provide a high degree of accuracy without altering the avionic ballast.     

A Keystone Transform Without Interpolation for SAR Ground Moving-Target Imaging

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image formation for a ground moving target necessitates the compensation of the unknown target trajectory. The keystone transform has been employed to remove the linear component of the range migration for the moving target, where interpolation is required. In this letter, a realization of the keystone transform avoiding interpolation is presented. The kernel of this transform, i.e., the range-frequency-dependent azimuth time rescaling, is implemented using only complex multiplications and fast Fourier transforms based on the scaling principle, which has been successfully applied in the equalization of the space-variant range cell migration in SAR processing. In addition, the moving target is coarsely focused according to the SAR geometry and the platform velocity while exploiting the scaling principle. This preliminary focusing is helpful in the isolation of the moving target from ground clutter, so as to facilitate a more refined processing with respect to each mover. SAR raw data combined with simulated echoes of moving targets are utilized to validate the presented approach     

Reduced-Dimensional Processing for Ground Moving Target Detection in Distributed Space-Based Radar

With multisatellite radar systems, several additional features are achieved: multistatic observation, interferometry, ground moving target indication (GMTI). In this letter, a new reduced-dimensional method based on joint pixels sum-difference (Sigma-Delta) data for clutter rejection and GMTI is proposed. The reduced-dimensional joint pixels Sigma-Delta data are obtained by the orthogonal projection of the joint pixels data of different synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images generated by a multisatellite radar system. In the sense of statistic expectation, the joint pixels Sigma-Delta data contain the common and different information among SAR images. Then, the objective of clutter cancellation and GMTI can be achieved by adaptive processing. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method even with clutter fluctuation and image coregistration errors