Synthetic aperture radar data visualization on the iPod Touch
Aaron Fouts, Rhonda J. Vickery, Uttam Majumder, Tracy Burchett, Troy L. Klein, Michael J. Minardi · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2010
A major area of focus for the Air Force is sensor performance in urban environments. Aircraft with multiple sensor modalities, such as Synthetic Aperture RADAR (SAR), Infrared (IR), and Electro-Optics (EO), are essential for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) of current and future urban battlefields. Although applications exist for visualization of these types of imagery, they usually require at least a laptop computer and internet connection. Field operatives need to be able to access georeferenced information about imagery as part of a Geographic Information System (GIS) on mobile devices. The iPod/iPhone has a 640x480 resolution multi-touch display, making it an excellent device for interacting with georeferenced imagery. We created an iPhone application that loads SAR imagery and allows the user to interact with it. The user multi-touch interface provides pan and zoom capabilities as well as options to change parameters relating to the query. We describe how operatives in the field can use this application to investigate SAR and GIS related problems on the iPhone mobile device, which otherwise would require a computer and Internet connection.