Remote Sensing of Volcan Ash Clouds by Weather Ground-based Radar: a Soft-Computing Aid on Electrico Characterization

Ground-based microwave radar systems can have a valuable role in volcanic ash monitoring as evidenced by available radar imagery, but their use has been so far not fully investigated. In order to allow a more reliable detection of volcanic ash clouds, a correct characterization of their electromagnetic properties must be processed: for this aim, a forward electromagnetic model is necessary. In this way, radar remote sensing systems would be carried out easier volcanic ash detection, improving aerial navigation safety. Electromagnetic behaviour of volcanic ash is determinable by the dielectric coefficient and an inverse mathematical model, computationally hard, starting from electric admittance of the same ashes. This typical Inverse Problems is also manageable by Soft Computing techniques, which allow to obtain flexible, robust, high quality and low computational estimative systems. Aim of this work is just to exploit heuristic functionality in order to characterize volcanic ashes in a frequency range which comprises most of radar remote sensing bands (such as L-, S-, C-, X- and Ka-bands). Research data are experimentally obtained through laboratory measures; performances of proposed approaches are very encouraging.