Instrumentation and Future Technologies TC Hosts Six Working Groups with Multiple IGARSS Activities Planned
The Instrumentation and Future Technologies (IFT) Technical Committee is a multi-disciplinary network of GRSS members actively working to promote and advance remote sensing instruments and technologies. IGARSS 2025 attendees in Brisbane, Australia, will have numerous opportunities to participate in IFT activities and attend the Committee’s annual meeting.
“The way I see it, Instrumentation and Future Technologies represents the first stage in the supply chain for acquiring the data we need to perform remote sensing applications,” said Dr. Rashmi Shah, IFT Technical Committee Chair. “[Our focus is] on technologies that are needed to take measurements…especially looking toward the future.”
Dr. Shah’s leadership of IFT has aligned well with her professional duties at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. A central focus of her JPL work is transitioning early-stage technology development to project-level implementation, addressing critical scientific questions and enabling new geoscience and remote sensing applications. For GRSS, she is also Chair of the Metro and Coastal Los Angeles Chapter, Membership Chair and Associate Editor for JSTARS. (Rashmi was recently featured in a GRSS Member profile here.)
As her two-year tenure as IFT Chair comes to a close this summer, Dr. Shah reflects on the many successes the TC has experienced as well as new activities planned for coming years. One of the notable accomplishments was the creation and spin-out of the Quantum Earth Science and Technology (QUEST) TC that now has some of the IFT working group chairs in leadership role as these members were organizing community contributed sessions over last few IGARSS related to Quantum sensing theme.
Another achievement has been the evolution of IFT workshops into regularly scheduled GRSS events. Two examples include IEEE GNSS Reflectometry (GNSS-R) Workshop – Specialist Meeting on Reflectometry using GNSS and other Signals of Opportunity held in early 2025 in coordination with IFT’s GNSS and Signals of Opportunity Working Group and Space LiDAR Workshop now in the planning stage for this November in Bozeman, Montana. The Space LiDAR Workshop was planned by Active Optical and Lidar working group as an IFT workshop in the past and now it it a fully-GRSS sponsored workshop.
As is true of all GRSS TCs, education is a major focal point for IFT which recently created an entirely new learning experience for high school students in New Zealand. IFT co-chair Delwyn Moller at University of Auckland introduced the young scientists to deploy instruments using GNSS-IR receiver in snow fields. IFT is now reproducing the award-winning program for implementation at other schools around the world, including other parts of New Zealand now with hopes to expand beyond in the future. In addition, IFT organized a capacity building workshop in India with a GNSS+R theme a couple of months ago, in collaboration with distinguished lecturer programs, speakers were selected.
To focus activities on specific applications and technologies, IFT has formed six working groups. Dr. Shah provided a short overview of their current and upcoming activities.
Active Microwave: Radar and SAR – This working group has hosted webinars on the uses of active radar and SAR sensors for geoscience applications. One of its two leads, Michelangelo Villano of the German Space Agency DLR, is a distinguished lecturer giving talks worldwide.
Passive Microwave: Radiometers – Radiometers are used for sensing natural emissions from both land and ocean surface, and collected data can also be used for atmospheric correction of other remotely sensed data. This working group is currently planning GRSS Summer School in the Los Angeles area.
Active Optical and LiDAR – As noted, this group is planning the upcoming Montana Space LiDAR Workshop.
GNSS and Signals of Opportunity – GPS and other communication signals transmitted from space asset. This working group is studying whether these Signals of Opportunity can be captured to analyze reflections from ground surface or atmospheric occultation for the extraction of new information. This group is coordinating the new biennial GNSS-R specialty meeting for GRSS, most recently held in April 2025.
Remote Sensing Instrumentation for Small Satellites – This group is studying cutting-edge sensors to fly aboard the smallest satellites, including PocketCubes. While the working group has hosted webinars, it is currently looking for a new lead.
Remote Sensing Instrumentation for UAVs – As the name implies, this group is focused on sensors for drones. Current plans call for a Summer School GRSS session as early as 2026.
Dr. Shah has also focused her energies on encouraging more collaboration between TCs. For example, she has actively engaged with the Remote sensing Environment, Analysis and Climate Technology (REACT) TC to make sure those members are aware of the cutting-edge technologies that IFT is currently investigating. In early May, she attended a REACT capacity building meeting for the Himalayan region in her native Nepal. And in 2024, she organized a joint summer school between IFT and Modeling in Remote Sensing (MIRS) TC.
For the immediate future, Dr. Shah invites GRSS members attending IGARSS 2025 to sign up for the IFT TC and plan to attend the committee’s annual meeting in Brisbane. In addition, IFT is hosting several technical sessions at IGARSS, which will be listed on the committee webpage. One of the topics in the theme of future technologies is on High-Altitude Pseudo Satellites of High Altitude Platforms (HAPS). Dr. Shah will be attending this year’s annual conference and invites you to come and check out IFT.
