2/4/2025 Bruce Adams
Accurately assessing fire risk and predicting wildfire spread is a major challenge. An ambitious project led by CS professor Elahe Soltanaghai, which has secured $2 million in funding to develop a UAS-mounted canopy-penetrating radar-tag system for understory fuel sensing.
Written by Bruce Adams
Pioneering UAS-Mounted Canopy Penetrating Radar Tech to Predict Wildfires
Wildfires are unpredictable and devastating, spreading rapidly and leaving destruction in their wake. Accurately assessing fire risk and predicting wildfire spread is a major challenge, as traditional remote sensing methods struggle to penetrate dense forest canopies and detect the fuel—such as dry vegetation—lying beneath
To address this problem, NASA has turned to cutting-edge technology. In December 2024, NASA selected seven groundbreaking projects under its highly competitive FireSense Technology Program (FIRET-23), an initiative managed by the Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) that seeks innovative Earth observation capabilities to improve wildfire prediction and response. Among the winners is an ambitious project led by CS professor Elahe Soltanaghai, which has secured $2 million in funding to develop a UAS-mounted canopy-penetrating radar tag system for understory fuel sensing.
A Multidisciplinary Team Tackling a Complex Problem
Understanding and predicting wildfires is not just an engineering problem—it requires expertise across multiple disciplines. That’s why this project brings together researchers from top universities, industrial research labs, and government agencies, combining knowledge in wireless sensing, embedded systems, remote sensing, machine learning, robotics, and fire ecology.
Soltanaghai highlights the importance of this collaboration:
"The challenge is too big for any single discipline to solve. By bringing together experts from different fields, we can build a system that bridges the gap between advanced technology and real-world wildfire management.” —Elahe Soltanaghai
Other Illinois Grainger College of Engineering team members include professor Mohamad Alipour from the Civil Engineering department and professor Girish Chowdhury from the Agricultural Engineering department. Other PIs on the team include Dr. Karen An, a remote sensing research scientist at NASA JPL; professor Gabriel Rebeiz from UC San Diego and Dr. Adam Watts, fire ecologist from the US Forest Service.
The Science Behind the Radar-Tag System
Soltanaghai describes the challenge of the project as designing a custom radar capable of penetrating through the forest. "If we can accurately measure surface layer biomass—how much there is and how dry it is—that data could significantly improve modeling and prediction algorithms. This, in turn, helps assess how risky an environment is for a fire to start and how fast it might spread. If a fire ignites nearby, having this information becomes even more critical for managing an active fire and making informed decisions to prevent further spread or mitigate risks.
The team has developed a novel backscatter tag system, which Soltanaghai describes as a QR code for the forest. These battery-free tags are dropped from drones deep into fire-prone areas, where they act as ground reflectors for the radar.
“They reflect radar signals in a unique way, allowing us to focus on the signals coming from the tags rather than getting lost in the clutter of the forest floor,” she says. “This allows us to get a much clearer picture of the biomass conditions on the ground.”
A Game-Changer for Wildfire Management
While the project is deeply rooted in technology development, including radar and tag design, its real-world impact could be profound. The integration of drone surveillance, radar sensing, and satellite imagery could revolutionize wildfire monitoring and response efforts, providing firefighters and land managers with critical, real-time data that has never been available before.
“The ultimate goal is to bridge the gap between cutting-edge technology and practical, deployable solutions,” Soltanaghai says.
“By bringing together engineering, environmental science, and fire management, we hope to create a system that not only advances scientific understanding but also saves lives and protects ecosystems.”
—Elahe Soltanaghai
Grainger Engineering Affiliations
Elahe Soltanaghai is an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor of computer science and is affiliated with electrical and computer engineering Coordinated Science Lab and the Wireless, Sensing, & Embedded Networked Systems (iSENS) Lab.
Mohamad Alipour is an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor of civil & environmental engineering.
Girish Chowdhury is an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor of agricultural and biological engineering and computer science and is affiliated with Coordinated Science Lab.