Microwave Instruments

GAMMA designs, manufactures and sells microwave remote sensing instruments. Some of the instruments are available as commercial products (GPRI, L-Band SAR, ELBARA) others are developed under contracts, e.g. of the European Space Agency (SnowScat, WBScat). 

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GAMMA Portable Radar Interferometer (GPRI)

The GPRI uses a novel imaging approach with a rotating array of real-aperture antennas that permits covering a very large field of view. The GPRI is very mobile and can quickly be mounted in a new site as it can be operated from a tripod. Measuring with high gain real-aperture antennas limits the signal noise and being affected by decorrelation during an aperture synthesis. Consequently, reliable measurements can be taken over several kilometers. At GAMMA we mainly use the GPRI to monitor potentially unstable slopes and rocks, but other applications as glacier velocity mapping and infrastructure applications are also well supported. The availability of two receive antennas with a spatial baseline permits measuring topographic heights. And operating the GPRI without azimuth rotation supports the monitoring of fast phenomena such as infrastructure deformation under load. First instruments were commercialized in 2010. Interferometric processing of the GPRI data is supported by the GAMMA Software.

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Instrument-specific Publications

Instrument Application Publications

GAMMA L-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar

The GAMMA L-band SAR is a new compact and versatile SAR system, which supports interferometric, polarimetric, and polarimetric-interferometric SAR data acquisitions from agile sensor platforms (UAVs, automobiles). Using two repeat-pass SAR images – or a longer time series of repeat-pass measurements – surface displacements in the line-of-sight (LOS) direction of the radar can be derived. Compared to the Ku-band GPRI the GAMMA L-band SAR system has complementary properties in terms of temporal decorrelation and sensitivity to the LOS surface displacements. SAR imaging and interferometric processing of the GAMMA L-band SAR data is supported by the Time Domain Back Projection (TDBP) processor and the InSAR processing modules ISP/DIFF&GEO of the GAMMA Software. First instruments were commercialized in 2019. 

Info Brochure

 Instrument-specific Publications

 SGM2020 Video Presentation on UAV/car-borne SAR displacement measurements

ELBARA-II

The ELBARA-II is a 1.4 GHz radiometer, built to support ground-based signature studies and cross-comparison campaigns related to the ESA SMOS and NASA SMAP satellite radiometers. A first series of instruments was built under ESA contract. Further instruments were then specifically built for interested customers from academia.

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Custom-Tailored Microwave Remote Sensing Systems

GAMMA also develops and implements specialized custom-tailored microwave hardware, such as the active microwave instruments SnowScat and Wide-Band Scatterometer (WBScat) built for the European Space Agency (ESA).