Director of the Institute

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Alberto Moreira

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Alberto Moreira

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Alberto Moreira

Director
Microwaves and Radar Institute
Muenchener Strasse 20, 82234 Wessling
Germany

Position

  • Direktor des Instituts für Hochfrequenztechnik und Radarsysteme des DLR
  • Professor am Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

Curriculum Vitae

Alberto Moreira was born in São José dos Campos, Brazil. He received the B.S.E.E. and M.S.E.E. degrees from the Aeronautical Technological Institute (ITA), São José dos Campos, in 1984 and 1986, respectively, and the Eng. Dr. degree (summa cum laude) from the Technical University of Munich, Germany, in 1993.  From 1996 to 2001, he was the Chief Scientist and Engineer with the SAR Technology Department, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. Under his leadership, the DLR airborne SAR system has been upgraded to operate in innovative imaging modes like polarimetric SAR interferometry and SAR tomography. Since 2001, he has been the Director of the Microwaves and Radar Institute at DLR and a full Professor with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany, in the field of microwave remote sensing. The Institute contributes to several scientific programs and space projects for actual and future airborne and spaceborne SAR missions like TerraSAR-X, TanDEM-X, Tandem-L, SAR-Lupe and SARah as well as Kompsat-6, PAZ, Sentinel-1, BIOMASS, ROSE-L, Harmony, Sentinel-1NG, Envision and VERITAS. The mission TanDEM-X, led by his Institute, has generated a global, high-resolution digital elevation model (DEM) of the Earth with unprecedented accuracy. Prof. Moreira is the initiator and Principal Investigator (PI) for this mission.

Prof. Moreira is author or co‐author of more than 500 publications in international conferences and journals, 8 book chapters and is holder of more than 40 patents in the radar and antenna field. He has supervised or co-supervised 52 PhD students and has regularly served as a lecturer in international courses and summer schools on Synthetic Aperture Radar. His professional interests and research areas encompass radar end-to-end system design and analysis, innovative microwave techniques and system concepts, signal processing, and remote sensing applications. He and his co-workers have been leading the development of digital beamforming for imaging radar systems, a technology that is now being adopted for the next generation of spaceborne SAR systems for global mapping of the Earth environment and its dynamics with improved coverage and resolution.

Prof. Moreira is an IEEE Fellow (2004), has served as President of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) in 2010 and has been a member of the IEEE GRSS Administrative Committee (1999 – 2001, 2004 – 2013). He was the founder and chair of the GRSS German Chapter (2003-2008), served as Associate Editor for the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters (2003-2007) and for the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing (since 2005), and he has been serving as chair of the Major Awards of the GRS society, since 2017. He and his colleagues received the IEEE GRSS Transactions Prize Paper Awards in 1997, 2001, and 2007, the IEEE GRSS Letters Prize Paper Award in 2015 and 2017. Prof. Moreira is also recipient of several prestigious international awards including the IEEE AESS Nathanson Award (1999) for the Young Engineer of the Year, the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Technical Field Award (2007), IEEE W.R.G. Baker Award from the IEEE Board of Directors (2012), the IEEE GRSS Distinguished Achievement Award (2014) and most recently, the IEEE Dennis J. Picard Medal (2023) for “leadership and innovative concepts in the design, deployment, and utilization of airborne and space-based radar systems”. He served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Information Technology Society of the German Association for Electrical, Electronic and Information Technologies (VDE/ITG, 2003 – 2008), as chair of the Scientific and Technical Council of DLR (2009 – 2011), Spokesman of the Leadership Circle of DLR at Oberpfaffenhofen (2009 – 2011) and as chair of the DLR’s Center of Excellence on Synthetic Aperture Radar (2000 – 2015). He has participated as a member of the technical program committee of more than 80 conferences and has contributed to the successful series of the European SAR conferences (EUSAR) since 1996 as a member of the Technical Program Committee, Technical Chairman (2000), Awards Chairman (2002–2004), General Chairman (2006), and Co-Chairman (2008); has served as Co-Chair of the European Radar Conference (EuRAD’07) and as General Co-Chair for the International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS’12) in Munich. From 2012 to 2018 he has served as principal investigator for the Helmholtz Alliance “Remote Sensing and Earth System Dynamics” in support of Tandem-L, a radar mission proposal for the global observation of dynamic processes on Earth’s surface with unprecedented quality and resolution. He has also served since 2003 as member of the several ESA Mission Advisory Groups including ENVISAT/ASAR, Sentinel-1 and Hydroterra, and is currently serving as a member of the Science Study Team for the ESA’s mission EnVision.

Selected Publications:

[1] - Moreira, A., Prats-Iraola, P., Younis, M., Krieger, G., Hajnsek, Irena and Papathanassiou, K.: A Tutorial on Synthetic Aperture Radar. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine, 1(1), 2013, pp. 6-43.

[2] - Krieger, Gerhard, Moreira, A., Fiedler, H., Hajnsek, I., Werner, M., Younis, M. and Zink, M.: TanDEM-X: A Satellite Formation for High Resolution SAR Interferometry. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 45 (11), 2007, pp. 3317-3341.

[3] - Moreira, A., Krieger, G., Hajnsek, I., Papathanassiou, K., Younis, M., Lopez-Dekker, F., Huber, S., Villano, M., Pardini, M., Eineder, M., De Zan, F., Parizzi, A.: Tandem-L: A Highly Innovative Bistatic SAR Mission for Global Observation of Dynamic Processes on the Earth’s Surface. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine, vol. 3, 2015, pp. 8-23.

[4] - Reigber, A. and Moreira, A.: First Demonstration of SAR Tomography using Polarimetric Airborne SAR Data. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 38 (5), 2000, pp. 2142-2152.

[5] - Moreira, A. and Mittermayer, J. and Scheiber, R.: Extended Chirp Scaling Algorithm for Air- and Spaceborne SAR Data Processing in Stripmap and ScanSAR Imaging Modes. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 34(5), 1996,  pp. 1123-1136.

[6] - Krieger, G., Gebert, N. and Moreira, A.: Multidimensional Waveform Encoding: A new Digital Beamforming Technique for Synthetic Aperture Radar Remote Sensing. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing 46 (1), 2007, pp. 31-46.

[7] - Zink, M., Moreira, A., Hajnsek, I., Rizzoli, P., Bachmann, M., Kahle, R., Fritz, T., Huber, M., Krieger, G., Lachaise, M. and Martone, M.: TanDEM-X: 10 years of formation flying bistatic SAR interferometry. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, 14, pp.3546-3565.

[8] Ponce, O., Prats, P., Scheiber, R., Reigber, A., Moreira, A.: First Airborne Demonstration of Holographic SAR Tomography with Fully Polarimetric Multi-Circular Acquisitions at L-band. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 54 (10), 2016, pp. 6170-6196.

[9] Gebert, N., Krieger, G., Moreira, A.: Digital Beamforming on Receive: Techniques and Optimization Strategies for High-Resolution Wide-Swath SAR Imaging. IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, 45 (2), 2009, pp. 564-592.

[10] Krieger, G., Moreira, A.: Spaceborne Bi- and Multistatic SAR: Potential and Challenges. IEE Proceedings on Radar Sonar and Navigation, 153 (2), 2006, pp. 184-198.

Selected Patents:

[1] Moreira, A., Krieger, G. and Mittermayer, J.: Satellite Configuration for Interferometric and/or Tomographic Remote Sensing by Means of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), US Patent US 6677884B2, European Patent EP 1273518, German Patent DE 10132723, granted on 13 January 2004.

[2] Mittermayer, J. and Moreira, A.: Method for Processing Spotlight SAR Raw Data, European Patent EP 0924534, US Patent US 6222933, German Patent DE 19757309, granted on 08 May 2002.

[3] Moreira, A. and Reigber, A.: Airborne or Spaceborne Tomographic Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Method, German Patent DE 10160399, granted on 27 May 2004.

[4] Krieger, G., Gebert, N. and Moreira, A.: High-Resolution Synthetic Aperture Side View Radar System Used By Means of Digital Beamforming,  EU Patent  EP 2018577B1 granted on 17 May 2011, US Patent US 7944390 granted on May 17, 2011.

[5] Prats, P., Mittermayer, J., Scheiber, R. and Moreira, A.: Method for Processing TOPS (Terrain Observation by Progressive Scan)-SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar)-Raw Data, German Patent DE 102007031020B3,  granted on 24 December 2008, U.S. Patent 8049657, granted on November 1, 2011.

[6] Moreira, A. and Mittermayer, J.: Method for azimuth scaling of SAR data and highly accurate processor for two-dimensional processing of ScanSAR data. European Patent EP 795762, DE 19609728, U.S. Patent 5812082 issued September 22, 1998.

Full publication list available at: