Michelangelo Villano

Michelangelo Villano received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees (Hons.) in telecommunication engineering from the Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy, in 2006 and 2008, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree (Hons.) in electrical engineering and information technology from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany, in 2016.

From 2008 to 2009, he was a Young Graduate Trainee with the European Space Research and Technology Center, European Space Agency, Noordwijk, The Netherlands, where he developed processing algorithms for ice sounding radar. Since 2009, he has been with the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Microwaves and Radar Institute, Weßling, Germany, where he developed, among others, the staggered synthetic aperture radar (SAR) acquisition mode that allows imaging a wide swath with high resolution through continuous variation of the pulse repetition interval. Since 2019, he has been the Head of the NewSpace SAR Research Group, where he leads the development of cost-effective and multi-static SAR concepts for frequent and enhanced Earth monitoring. In 2017, he was a Visiting Research Scientist with the Communications, Tracking, and Radar Division, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, USA, where he adapted the staggered SAR mode to the NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR) mission, for which staggered SAR is the baseline acquisition mode. Since 2019, he has also been a Lecturer with Ulm University, Ulm, Germany. He has authored or coauthored nearly 50 peer-review journal papers, a book chapter, and over 100 articles in international conference or workshop proceedings. He holds 14 patents in the field of SAR.

Dr. Villano was a recipient of the First Place Student Paper Award at the European Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar (EUSAR) 2014, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) Letters Prize Paper Award in 2015 and 2017, the Student Paper Award at the Asia–Pacific Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar (APSAR) 2015, the DLR Science Award in 2016 and 2023, the Award as Fellow of the Werner von Siemens Ring Foundation in 2017, the Information Technology Society (ITG) Dissertation Award in 2017, the Best Paper Award at the German Microwave Conference 2019, and the Best Paper Award (First Prize) at the APSAR 2025. In 2022, he was awarded a Starting Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). He is a Senior Member of IEEE. He is co-chair of the Working Group on “Active Microwave: Radar and SAR” of the IEEE GRSS’s Technical Committee on Instrumentation and Future Technologies. He is a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE GRSS for the term 2025-2026. He serves as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions of Geoscience and Remote Sensing. He served as a Technical Program Chair for the EUSAR 2024.

Title of the presentation:
Spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar Technologies for Frequent and Global Earth Monitoring

Abstract:
Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) represents a fundamental means for Earth monitoring from space. An inherent limitation of SAR, however, is that the azimuth resolution constrains the swath width and thus hinder frequent observations at a global scale. This limitation can be overcome by staggered SAR, an acquisition mode that uses digital beamforming together with continuous variation of the pulse repetition interval and has been implemented in the recently-launched NASA-ISRO SAR mission. Besides complex systems, novel ambiguous SAR modes can circumvent the swath/resolution constrain without the need for digital beamforming and are effective for dedicated applications, such as maritime surveillance and ground deformation monitoring, also thanks to the exploitation of waveform diversity and innovative postprocessing techniques. The coherent combination of SAR images, taken from different angles, unlocks further opportunities, such as the generation of accurate digital elevation models and high-resolution tomograms that unveil the three-dimensional structure of vegetation, ice, and dry soil. Distributed systems based on clusters of small satellites flying in formation enable simultaneous collection of such multi-angular images with a significant impact on numerous applications. An affordable and versatile approach for their demonstration is based on swarms of drones equipped with lightweight radar sensors. These advances are forerunners for the development of future groundbreaking Earth observation missions that will offer remarkable societal benefits.