Browsing by Author "Shaw, Joseph"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7

Airborne Thermal Imaging for Wildlife Surveys
(2013-03) Lommatsch, Gavin; Shaw, Joseph
Taking the level of wildlife surveying to the next level, infra-red cameras have the potential to accomplish research through more thorough, accurate, and cost-effective methods. Infra-red video captured from a camera attached to the bottom of a plane is analyzed with custom Matlab code to isolate still frames and video clips that illustrate the various types of signals observed during the test flights. These results are used to tailor the code to make it smarter and make the data more easily analyzed and manipulated for data gotten from future flights.
Calibration of Weather Station Instruments and Heat Island Effects
(2013-03) Isbell, William; Shaw, Joseph
The Optical Remote Sensor Laboratory Montana State University operates two weather stations, one on the roof of Cobleigh Hall, and the other in an agricultural field west of campus. In recent years, temperature readings received from these two weather stations have shown a small but significant bias. This project sought to determine how much of this difference is caused by calibration uncertainties and how much might be caused by a “heat island effect.” First, the relative calibration between the temperature and humidity probes of each station was determined using a common reference probe, after which the reference probe was sent to a factory for recalibration. Secondly, the absolute calibration for each station was determined with the newly calibrated probe. Thirdly, the common reference sensor and a GPS were mounted on a backpack frame and data was collected throughout the campus and the vicinity so that a map of the magnitude and spatial extent of a heat island could be plotted on a satellite image. The presentation will describe the experiment and show results of the data, which currently are being processed.
Gallatin Valley Winds
(2013-03) Heuscher, Lena; Shaw, Joseph
While day-to-day weather may appear to have no apparent pattern, if the weather patterns are analyzed over a longer period of time, patterns start to emerge. One of the most prevalent weather events in Gallatin Valley is wind. Using wind roses, comparisons of the Gallatin Valley wind patterns can be made over different time periods, such as diurnally, monthly, or seasonally. A wind rose is a diagram that depicts the distribution of wind direction and speed at a location over a period of time. The length of each spoke on a wind rose indicates how often the wind comes from a specific direction. Longer spokes mean the wind comes from that direction more often. The colors on each spoke displays how often the wind from this direction falls within a given wind speed range.
Hyperspectral Band Selection for Multispectral Image Classification with Convolutional Networks
(IEEE, 2021-07) Morales, Giorgio; Sheppard, John; Logan, Riley; Shaw, Joseph
In recent years, Hyperspectral Imaging (HSI) has become a powerful source for reliable data in applications such as remote sensing, agriculture, and biomedicine. However, hyperspectral images are highly data-dense and often benefit from methods to reduce the number of spectral bands while retaining the most useful information for a specific application. We propose a novel band selection method to select a reduced set of wavelengths, obtained from an HSI system in the context of image classification. Our approach consists of two main steps: the first utilizes a filter-based approach to find relevant spectral bands based on a collinearity analysis between a band and its neighbors. This analysis helps to remove redundant bands and dramatically reduces the search space. The second step applies a wrapper-based approach to select bands from the reduced set based on their information entropy values, and trains a compact Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to evaluate the performance of the current selection. We present classification results obtained from our method and compare them to other feature selection methods on two hyperspectral image datasets. Additionally, we use the original hyperspectral data cube to simulate the process of using actual filters in a multispectral imager. We show that our method produces more suitable results for a multispectral sensor design.
Radiometry and the Friis transmission equation
(American Association of Physics Teachers, 2013) Shaw, Joseph
To more effectively tailor courses involving antennas, wireless communications, optics, and applied electromagnetics to a mixed audience of engineering and physics students, the Friis transmission equation—which quantifies the power received in a free-space communication link—is developed from principles of optical radiometry and scalar diffraction. This approach places more emphasis on the physics and conceptual understanding of the Friis equation than is provided by the traditional derivation based on antenna impedance. Specifically, it shows that the wavelength-squared dependence can be attributed to diffraction at the antenna aperture and illustrates the important difference between the throughput (product of area and solid angle) of a single antenna or telescope and the throughput of a transmitter-receiver pair.
Testing a Low-cost All-Sky Infrared Cloud Imager
(2013-03) Redman, Brian; Shaw, Joseph
Information about cloud patterns is useful for climate science studies and Earth-space optical communications research. Thermal infrared sky imaging is a technique that records cloud patterns by measuring the heat radiation emitted by the clouds. This method is particularly well suited for continuous ground-based measurements of cloud cover statistics because it functions equally well during day and night. Sophisticated infrared cloud imagers have been developed previously at Montana State University, but there is an interest in exploring the capabilities of lower-cost systems. A prototype of a low-cost infrared cloud imager capable of imaging the entire sky dome has been developed. The prototype of this system uses a metal dome to reflect the whole sky to an off-axis infrared camera. The algorithms to analyze the distorted image were also developed. In this presentation, an overview of the instrument design will be presented, and example images will be shown and described.
Winterization and Upgrade of Remote Weather Station
(2013-03) Anderson, Erik; Shaw, Joseph
The Optical Remote Sensor Laboratory (ORSL) operates a weather station at the field test site of the Zero Emissions Research and Technology Center (ZERT), located on the Montana State University (MSU) Agriculture Experiment station a few miles west of campus. The weather station uses a wireless link to transmit data to ORSL in Cobleigh Hall on the MSU campus. The ZERT weather station was traditionally not operated in the winter, because ZERT's research is confined to the summer months and because the cold weather causes frequent loss of battery power and a weakened wireless link. However, ORSL has expanded its use of the ZERT weather station to include long-term climate monitoring, which requires that it be operated year-round. To achieve this, the power system of the weather station must be upgraded. General improvements must also be made to improve overall performance and to protect against lightning strikes and other damage. The upgrade of the ZERT weather station consists of three phases. First, the components of the weather station's wireless link are tested in low temperatures to assess their performance and capabilities in cold weather. The power system of the weather station is then redesigned based on the results of the low temperature tests to ensure optimal year-round performance. Finally, the redesigned components are deployed at the ZERT field site and field tested to determine their effectiveness.