Usman Iqbal Ahmed is a PhD Candidate at SARlab in the Engineering Science Department, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC. He did his Masters and Bachelors both in Avionics Engineering from National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad Pakistan with specialization in Signal and Image Processing.
His area of research for his PhD would be Linear Infrastructure and Permafrost Monitoring based on Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) and Foto Detection and Ranging (Fodar) / Photogrammetry data fusion techniques to capture sub-meter change detection. He is conducting this research under the supervision of Prof. Bernhard Rabus. The research would be conducted on the data collected through SARlab’s own Airborne SAR sensor (SlimSAR– A fully Polarimetric L & X band SAR sensor) and a optical/Fodar sensor (A Nikon D850 DSLR + associated support hardware) operated on a twin engine Helio-Courier. The Target Area for the research is the Alaska-Canada Highway near Silver-City Air strip (being used as a base station for our flight operations). The research would look into sophisticated methods for sensor fusion and direct and indirect change detection.