"Studies on Theories, Systems and Methods of Rarefactional Microwave Imaging”, a project under the national program for key basic research and development (Program 973) kicks off on April 15 in Beijing.

The project, conducted by Institute of Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IECAS), targets China’s major strategic demand for medium & long-term earth observation, urgent application demands for high-precision mapping and resources surveys, natural disaster and environment monitoring, reconnaissance, surveillance and early warning, as well as existing bottleneck problems such as difficulty in realizing the microwave imaging existence system based on Nyquist Sampling Theorem and classic digital signal processing theory, complexity in the imaging processing method, difficulty in accomplishing mass data transmission, information redundancy but difficult in feature extraction, studies on the new theories, systems and methods for the acquisition, featuring, transmission, processing and application of high-resolution data from earth observation.

Initiated in July 2009 with the approval of Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China (MOST), this project is scheduled to be completed in five years. IECAS is the primary undertaker, with others universities including Tsinghua University, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Xidian University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, University of Science and Technology of China, etc.

The national key laboratory for microwave imaging technology successfully initiated this project in the fierce competition with the concerted efforts of the entire scientific research team, showing the laboratory’s capability and level of organizing and undertaking national key basic research projects. The implementation of this project will further promote the development of the laboratory and increase its comprehensive strength to motivate it to make a greater contribution to the country. (No. 1 Division)