Investigation of calibration aspects of fully and compact polarimetric SAR systems

Abstract

One of the current developments in the remote sensing field is radar polarimetry. It is a powerful tool in monitoring the earth due to its ability of providing more information about the physical properties of the surface. In this paper, we investigate of calibration aspects of fully polarimetric calibration and apply it to a data we collected over the Teuge airport (The Netherlands), where one square trihedral corner reflector was deployed inside the airport perimeter. Also, We discuss the development of calibration for both fully and compact polarimetry as well as the need for calibrating compact polarimetric data, due to the limited work in the past years and the compact sensors which are under development by different space agencies in the world. The compact polarimetric modes have the power of reducing cost complexity, mass, cost, and data rate of a SAR system while attempting to acquire many of the abilities of fully polarimetric SAR systems.