Synthetic Aperture Radar                                                                                            440 Watson Dr

Microwave and Infrared Remote Sensing                                                          Indialantic, FL 32903

Radiative Transfer                                                                                               phone: 321-953-6424

Mathematical Analysis                                                                                                                      

Array‑type Antennas                                                                                  e-mail: amilman@ieee.org

Academic Background

University                                Field                 De­gree

University of Maryland             Astronomy        Ph.D.

Columbia University                 Mathematics     B. S.

Summary of Professional Experience:

Dr. Milman has 25 years of experience in the field of satel­lite remote sensing of the earth's atmosphere and sur­face and radar imaging. He is currently developing advanced methods for processing and analyzing data from synthetic aperture radars (SAR’s). He has re­cently develop­ed novel methods for processing data from SAR’s; for imaging ocean waves with SAR; and for meas­uring ocean wave motions with two-an­tenna SAR’s.  He developed a mathematically exact solution to the SAR imaging problem and to the motion-compensation problems associated with ultra-wideband (UWB) SAR’s. In 1999, he published a book, Mathematical Principles of Remote Sensing.

            Before that, he analyzed precipitation measurements from the Microwave Sounding Units (MSU's),  along with radiosonde data, to study rainfall patterns in the tropics.  His background also includes work with the Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) that now is routinely flown on DoD satellites.  He has developed algorithms for measuring geophysical variables from satellite data, both from modeling and analysis of actual data.  These variables include sea surface temperature and the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere.  

            He has also developed ways to use microwave radiome­ters to measure sea surface temperature, near-surface wind speed, and other ocean variables from space.  He has pat­ented a novel array antenna for microwave radiometric obser­va­tions of the Earth from space that will offer very high spatial resolution. He has ana­lyzed data from different micro­wave radi­ometers on weather satel­lites and per­formed design analyses for new mi­crowave sensors. 

            He has also used the data from the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR) on Nimbus 7 to determine the nature of the calibration problems that the instrument had and devise an algorithm to correct for these errors.  He also developed an algorithm for determining the sea surface temperature from those data and quality-checking procedures that were applied to the entire data set.  Other experience includes design of an imaging Michaelson interferometer for measuring the infrared spectra of gases in the atmosphere.  He has experience programming many kinds of computers, from IBM and VAX mainframes to PC’s; lately, he has written programs to display and plot satellite data on a PC. 

            Dr. Milman has also had extensive experience in the fields of ra­diative transfer, mathematical imaging prob­lems, and the solu­tion of underdetermin­ed systems of linear equa­tions in the pres­ence of noise. Other interests are the de­sign of remote-sensing instruments; perform­ing opti­cal or mi­cro­wave experi­ments; writ­ing; and teaching.

            His recent book, Mathematical Principles of Remote Sensing: Making Inferences from Noisy Data, systematically discusses the mathematical methods that are used in remote sensing of geophysical variables from air or space; these methods are applicable to a wide variety of other physics and engineering problems.  Most of this material would otherwise be unavailable to researchers because it is buried in many unrelated journal articles and is inadequately explained therein. This book also contains some important new results.

 

Past Positions:

Northrop Grumman, Surveillance and Battlefield Management Systems, 5/97 to 12/03

PO Box 9650, Melbourne, FL 32902-9650

            Technical Specialist, working on advanced problems having to so with synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and automatic target recognition (ATR). Dr. Milman has written a program to model the radar signal history for a collection of point targets, and then use w-k migration to process the data and produce an image. One result of this activity was to show that it is possible to make SAR images, even with a very wide radar beamwidth and with squint angles up to 45° or more, that have no perceptible geometric distortion. He is also studying radar profiles of vehicles on the ground taken with the Joint STARS radar.

 

Lockheed Martin Tactical Defense Systems, (temporary) 4/96 to 11/96

PO Box 85, Litchfield Park, AZ 85340

                Engineering Technical Manager in the field of synthetic aperture radar.

 

Science Applications International Corp.,  1/93 to 9/94

6725 Odyssey Dr., Huntsville, AL 35806-3301

                Dr. Milman was a senior scientist working at Marshall Space Flight Center, studying data from satellite micro­wave instru­ments.  He used these data to study prob­lems related to global cli­mate change.  In particular,  He also used data from the Microwave Sounding Units (MSU's), which are microwave radiometers that have flown on several NOAA weather satellites, to study rainfall patterns over the oceans. He also developed mathematical methods for analyzing both satellite and radiosonde data; the aim being to discover what, if any, waves (e.g., gravity waves)  might be present in the atmosphere that affect rainfall. This was part of a larger effort to detect possible changes in rainfall patterns due to changes in climate.

                He also studied ways to apply multifractals to the analysis of rainfall patterns and studied statistical properties of SSM/I data to determine the information content of the data.

 

University of Michigan, 5/92 to 12/92

Ann Arbor, MI

                Dr. Milman studied fractal representations of natural surfaces.

 

Environmental Research Institute of Michigan, 3/86 to 4/92

PO Box 134001, Ann Arbor, MI 48113

                Dr. Milman developed methods for using SAR data to mea­sure ocean waves and currents, using single- and dual-an­tenna SAR's.  In this work, he devel­oped new methods for processing SAR data that are, in part, extensions of more tradi­tional focusing algorithms, but are considerably more general and power­ful.  He also built a SAR processor to  analyze actual SAR data and ex­tended the theo­retical under­standing of possible non-tra­di­tional SAR imaging mechanisms.  He created a novel and power­ful method for processing SAR data that solves the electro­mag­netic imag­ing problem exactly.

                He also invented a high-resolu­tion micro­wave radi­ome­ter for remote sens­ing of the earth from space.  He has re­cently pub­lished a general analysis of the radiometric sensitivity of different kinds of synthet­ic-aperture radiometers; an analysis of two-an­tenna ra­dars; and the method of measuring ocean wave spec­tra with SAR data.  He also wrote software to calculate the radar backscattering cross-section of the ocean surface under different wind conditions.

 

Hughes Aircraft Co., Space & Communications  Group, 10/83 to 2/86

PO Box 92919, Los Angeles, CA 90009

                Dr. Milman developed of algo­rithms for use in remote sensing of the Earth from space, in preparation for the launch of SSM/I.  In addition, he has devel­oped model­ing techniques for esti­mating the errors in the esti­mates of these remotely sensed pa­rameters.  He wrote the software needed to model the transfer of microwave radiation through the Earth's atmo­s­phere and par­tici­pated in the design of a novel kind of microwave ra­diome­ter that makes use of synthetic-aper­ture techniques.

 

Systems & Applied Sciences Corp., 5/77 to 10/83

5809 Annapolis Rd., Hyattsville, MD 20784

                Dr. Milman worked at NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center to ana­lyze data from the Scanning Mul­tichannel Mi­crowave Radiome­ter (SMMR) that flew on Nimbus 7.  He developed the algorithm for retrieving sea surface temper­ature from those data.  These studies made it possible for him to correct for calibra­tion er­rors in the instru­ment.  He also devised a way to correct for effects of the antenna pat­tern.  He developed a computer model of the micro­wave emission from an atmo­sphere that contains rain­drops and ice particles; this model was used to explain observations of the micro­wave emission above a hurricane.  Dr. Milman also exam­ined the accura­cy of the water vapor profiles that could be derived from certain infra­red satel­lite sensors.

 

Patent

High Resolution Passive Microwave Sensors for Earth Remote Sens­ing, US Patent 5,053,781.   This is an array antenna for observations of the earth from space.  It has very high spatial resolu­tion, low mass, no moving parts, and good radiomet­ric sen­sitivity.

Memberships

Dr. Milman is a member of URSI commission F, as well as IEEE,  the American Geophysical Union, and the American Meteorological Society.

Book

Mathematical Principles of Remote Sensing, published by Ann Arbor Press, Chelsea, Michigan, is a graduate-level text on making inferences from noisy data.

Refereed Publications

‘Why 12C16O Profiles in Dark Clouds Do Not Have Flat Tops,’ A. S. Mil­man, Astrophys. J. (Letters), 193, pp L93 to L96 (1974).

‘Carbon Monoxide Observations of a Dust Cloud in the Orion Re­gion: L1630,’ A. S. Milman, G. R. Knapp, F. J. Kerr, S. L. Knapp, and W. J. Wilson, As­tronom­ical J., 80, pp 93-100 (1975).

‘Carbon Monoxide Observations of 34 Dust Clouds,’ A. S. Mil­man, G. R. Knapp, S. L. Knapp, and W. J. Wilson, As­tro­nomi­cal J., 80, pp 101-110 (1975).

‘Further Investigations of the CO Emission from the North America Dust Cloud and L1630,’ A. S. Milman, Astrophys. J., 202, p 673 (1975).

‘Carbon Monoxide Observations of a Rotating Dust Globule,’ A. S. Mil­man, Astrophysical J., 211, p 128 (1977).

‘Calculation of Optical Depths from an Integral of the Voigt Func­tion,’ A. S. Milman, J. Quantitative Spectroscopy Radiative Trans­fer, 20, pp 593-97 (1978).

‘Atmospheric Corrections to Passive Microwave Observations of the Ocean,’ T. T. Wilheit, A. T. C. Chang, and A. S. Milman, Bound­ary Layer Mete­orolo­gy, 18, pp 65-77 (1980).

‘Retrieval of Ocean Surface and Atmospheric Parameters from Multi­chan­nel Microwave Radiometric Measurements,’ A. T. C. Chang and A. S. Milman, IEEE Trans. Geoscience. & Remote Sens­ing, GE-20, pp 217-224 (1982).

‘Microwave Radiometric Observations Near 19.35, 92, and 183 GHz of Precipi­tation in Tropical Storm Cora,’ T. T. Wil­heit, A. T. C. Chang, J. L. King, E. B. Rog­ers, R. A. Nieman, B. M. Krupp, A. S. Milman, J. S. Stratigos, and H. Siddal­ingaiah, J. Ap­plied Me­te­or., 21, pp 1137-45 (1982).

‘Retrieval of Ocean Surface Parameters from the Scanning Mul­ti­channel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR) on the Nim­bus-7 Satel­lite,’ T. T. Wilheit, J. R. Greaves, J. A. Gatlin, D. Han, B. M. Krupp, A. S. Milman, and E. S. Chang, IEEE Trans. Geoscience. & Remote Sensing, GE-22, pp 133-43 (1984).

‘Sea Surface Temperatures from the Scanning Multichannel Mi­cro­wave Ra­diome­ter on Nimbus 7,’ A. S. Milman and T. T. Wilheit, J. Geo­phys. Re­search, 90, pp 11631-641 (1985).

‘Antenna Pattern Corrections for the Nimbus-7 SMMR,’ A. S. Milman, IEEE Trans. Geoscience. & Remote Sensing, GE-24, pp 212-219 (1986).

‘How Wind Affects Passive Microwave Measurements of Sea Surface Tempera­ture,’ A. S. Milman, IEEE Trans. Geoscience & Remote Sen­sing, GE-25, 22-27 (1986).

‘Sparse-aperture microwave radiometers for earth remote sens­ing,’ A. S. Milman, Radio Science, 23, 193-205 (1988).

‘Ocean Imaging with Two-antenna Radars,' A. S. Milman, J. R. Bennett, and A. O. Scheffler, IEEE Tr. An­tennas and Propa­ga­tion, 40, 597-605 (1992).

‘A Theory of the Synthetic Aperture Radar Images of Time-de­pendent Scenes,’ A. S. Milman, A. O. Scheffler, and J. R. Ben­nett, Jour­nal of Geophys­ical Research 98(C1), 911-925 (1993).

‘SAR Imaging by -k Migration,’ International J. of Remote Sensing 14, 1965-1979 (1993).

‘Solution of systems of quadratic equations,’ International J. of Remote Sensing, 18, 1365-1372 (1997).

‘A comment on the use of bandpass filtering to discover atmospheric oscillations,’ A. S. Milman, International J. of Remote Sensing, 19, 2275-2282 (1998).

Mathematical Principles of Remote Sensing, A. S. Milman, Ann Arbor Press, Chelsea, MI (1999).

‘The Hyperbolic Geometry of SAR Imaging,’ A. S. Milman, submitted to Radio Science (2004).