2007 Sessions
Miami, Florida 2007 Industry Visits:
Telefónica
Telefónica is a world leader in the telecommunication sector, with presence in Europe, Africa and Latin America. As of June 2006, Telefónica had 191.7 million customers.
Telefónica is one of the integrated operators with the largest percentage of its business outside its home market and a reference point in the Spanish and Portuguese speaking market. It is therefore becoming the leading multi-service and multi-domestic provider.
The Visit will include trips to the Miami KeyCenter™ and the Optical Distribution Frame or "meet me room".
The Optical Distribution Frame
ODF provides interconnection with other carriers and telecom service providers. Serves as the "Meet Me Room" for telecom carriers and telecommunications service providers who connect their fiber and copper cabling to the various interconnect panels. Patch cables are then used to link customers to these carriers and service providers together to form customized telecommunications circuits.
• Highly flexible interconnections
• Supports all commonly used fiber and copper cabling plant
• Enough room to accommodate future KeyCenterTM growth
• Carrier Facilities Agreement (CFA)-style management schema
Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing (CSTARS)
The Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing (CSTARS) of the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS) is a modern, state-of-the-art high capability receiving and analysis facility for X-band satellite data. The facility is located at the former U.S. Naval Observatory/Alternate Time Tracking Station site at Richmond, in southern Miami-Dade County, Florida, about 25 miles south of Miami. CSTARS was designed and developed as a highly automated, near real time, multi satellite reception and processing facility.
Satellite data reception and tracking is accomplished with two ViaSat 11.28m X-band antennas with characteristics: G/T = 37dB @ 5 deg elevation; half-power beamwidth = 0.24 deg and 1st sidelobe = 15 db. The antennas have a center elevation of 12 m (~39 ft). The CSTARS coverage map or visibility for a typical LEO satellite in an 800 km orbit is about 2.5° minimum elevation (e.g., ENVISAT, ERS-2, RadarSat) and covers all of Florida and the eastern half of the USA even into northern part of Canada, all of the Caribbean Basin including the Lesser Antilles, Central America, Mexico, and a significant fraction of northern South America. These two antennas are housed inside radomes to allow for continuous operations even when hurricanes pass over the site. The radomes are rated to withstand up to 150 mph winds.
The expanded coverage of satellite tracking will allow us to provide rapid data access for many time sensitive applications such as environmental monitoring (e.g. the Everglades), storm prediction (e.g. hurricanes and tropical storms), volcanic eruptions (e.g. numerous volcanoes are active in Mexico and Central America), pollution (e.g., oil spills), natural hazards (e.g., flooding and mud slides), change detection (e.g. beach erosion, agricultural land uses, vegetation monitoring).
The fixed Mark III VLBI Antenna formerly used for VLBI measurements has been converted to provide communications for data and voice between the South Pole Station and the continental USA. The 20 m antenna tracks slowly a former geo-synchronous weather satellite, GOES-3, which is visible to the South Pole for about 6-8 hours daily when its figure eight track swings south of the equator. The program is administered by the Polar Programs of Raytheon and the National Science Foundation.
Given the potentially large number of satellites and data types to be accessed by CSTARS, the number of possible applications is enormous, far too many to be discussed in a document like this. Below we list an example set of applications, grouped by discipline which might be relevant for the system proposed here. In the following sample list of applications, the major data type to be used is also listed, using the following abbreviations:
SAR is Synthetic Aperture Radar including RADARSAT-1/2, ERS-2, ENVISAT ASAR, TerraSAR-X, ALOS/PALSAR and future SAR sensors;
INSAR is Interferometric SAR;
VI is visible and infrared imagery, including MODIS, SPOT-2/4/5, Quickbird, IKONOS, Orbview-3, Formosat-2;
PMW is passive microwave including AMSR, SSMI, WINDSAT;
SCAT is active microwave scatterometer including QuikScat, ASCAT and WindSCAT.
Ocean Sciences:
Mapping of ocean color and temperature fields (VI)
Collection of surface wave statistics (SAR)
Frontal tracking (VI, SAR)
Estimation of surface wind fields (SAR, SCAT, PMW)
Beach and barrier island erosion (SAR)
River outflows/sediment resuspension (VI)
Biological productivity (VI)
Langmuir circulation and internal wave signatures (SAR, VI)
Wave breaking distributions (SAR, VI)
Wave-Current Interactions (SAR)
Extreme wave detection (SAR)
Environmental Monitoring:
Pollution plume monitoring (VI, SAR)
Location/velocity of oil slicks, with "backtrack" capability (VI, SAR)
Vegetation type and health (VI)
Coastal zone monitoring (VI, SAR)
Water level changes (SAR)
Volcano monitoring (SAR)
Invasive species assessment (SAR, VI)
Soil moisture (SAR)
Tropical storm monitoring (SAR, SCAT, PMW)
Terrestrial Applications:
Subsidence (SAR)
Earthquake (SAR)
Land use (VI, SAR)
Change Detection (VI, SAR)
DEM generation (VI, SAR)
