ABSTRACT
A basic problem in remote sensing is to determine the nature of a distant object by measuring signals transmitted by or reflected from that object. If the object of interest is sufficiently remote, that is, is in the far field, the data we obtain by sampling the propagating spatio-temporal field is related, approximately, to what we want by Fourier transformation. In this chapter we present examples to illustrate the roles played by Fourier series and Fourier coefficients in the analysis of remote sensing and signal transmission. We use these examples to motivate several of the computational problems we shall consider in detail later in the text. We also discuss two inverse problems involving the Laplace transform.
