IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - March 2020 - 10

SENSOR

BAND

PERIOD

ORGANIZATION/
COUNTRY

Seasat

1978

NASA

ERS-1/2

1991-2011

ESA

JERS-1

1992-1998

JAXA

Radarsat-1

1995-2013

CSA

Envisat/ASAR

2002-2012

ESA

ALOS PALSAR

2006-2011

JAXA

Cosmo-SkyMed

2007-present

ASI

TerraSAR-X

2007-present

DLR

HJ-1C

2012-2013

China

Kompsat-5

2013-present

Korea

Radarsat-2

2014-present

CSA

ALOS-2

2014-present

JAXA

Sentinel-1

2014-present

ESA

GF-3

2016-present

China

PAZ

2018-present

Spain

SAOCOM

2018-present

Argentina

ICEEYE-X

2018-present

Finland/Poland

Radarsat
-Constellation

2019-present

CSA

JAXA: Japanese Aerospace Agency; CSA: Canadian Space Agency; ASI: Agenzia Spaziale
Italiana; DLR: Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt.

20
15
10

2019

2017

2015

2013

2011

2009

2007

2005

2003

2001

1999

1997

1995

1993

1991

FIGURE 2. The number of civil SAR satellites in orbit during a

given year.

Here, we do not see any clear trend: the percentage of radar/
SAR-related papers in the field of remote sensing remained
at approximately 20-25%.
In our final analysis, we consider the origins of the published papers. It is very difficult to determine the origins of
the authors, so we look at the available funding information attributed to some of the published papers. This is a
biased view, however, as not all papers include information on funding. This is also a relatively recent development, which is enforced or encouraged differently in various countries. Therefore, in the period from 2014 to 2018,
39% of papers concerning radar or SAR had attributed
funding information. From 2009 to 2013, this was the case
for just 23% of papers, and only 7% of papers from 2004
to 2008 had funding information available. From 1999 to
2003, only 11 out of 6,326 papers provided funding information, so we did not consider this or previous periods.
Nevertheless, the funding information gives us a hint
of the spatial distribution of the published papers and the
shift in research over time. In Figure 5, this development
can be seen more clearly. Overall, InSAR research from
2014 to 2018 was dominated by China, with 72% of the
papers funded by Chinese agencies and 19% funded by
agencies from the European Union (EU) or Switzerland.
In the period from 2004 to 2008, 63% of the papers
were funded by the EU or Switzerland, 22% by the United States and Canada, and only 15% by China including
Hong Kong.
This is a tremendous shift in terms of the research focus. However, these results overemphasize the influence of
China, as pressure for authors to include funding information is especially strong in China, and the results may look
different when the origin of the authors instead of the funding is assessed.
The prevalence of Chinese and European research institutions in the field of InSAR shows that our following analysis of research projects in the Dragon program can provide
an important insight into the state of InSAR research, as
Chinese and European institutions have dominated the
published research in InSAR and SAR remote sensing in
recent years.

6
5
(%)

(%)

4
3
2
0

1988
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
2014
2016
2018

FIGURE 3. The percentage of InSAR-related papers from among
all papers in the research area of remote sensing.

40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0

1988
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
2014
2016
2018

TABLE 1. AN OVERVIEW OF PAST AND PRESENT
CIVIL SAR SATELLITE SYSTEMS.

FIGURE 4. The percentage of radar/SAR-related papers from

among all papers in the research area of remote sensing.
IEEE GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING MAGAZINE

MARCH 2020

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - March 2020

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