Abstract
The GaoFen-3 (GF-3) satellite is the first fully polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite designed for civil use in China. The satellite operates in the C-band and has 12 imaging modes for various applications. Three fully polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) imaging modes are provided with a resolution of up to 8 m. Although polarimetric calibration (PolCAL) of the SAR system is periodically undertaken, there is still some residual distortion in the images. In order to assess the polarimetric accuracy of this satellite and improve the image quality, we analyzed the polarimetric distortion errors and performed a PolCAL experiment based on scattering properties and corner reflectors. The experiment indicates that the GF-3 images can meet the satellite’s polarimetric accuracy requirements, i.e., a channel imbalance of 0.5 dB in amplitude and ±10 degrees in phase and a crosstalk accuracy of −35 dB. However, some images still contain residual polarimetric distortion. The experiment also shows that the residual errors of the GF-3 standard images can be diminished after further PolCAL, with a channel imbalance of 0.26 dB in amplitude and ±0.2 degrees in phase and a crosstalk accuracy of −42 dB.
Highlights
The GaoFen-3 (GF-3) satellite, which operates in the C-band, is the first fully polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) imaging satellite in China [1]
Since the polarimetric distortion matrices (PDM) vary with range, we first divided the measured images into different strips along the image range
The GF-3 satellite is the first multi-polarization SAR imaging satellite in China for civil use, and it has three full-polarization imaging modes, for which the image polarimetric quality is vital for the increasing PolSAR research group and applications
Summary
The GaoFen-3 (GF-3) satellite, which operates in the C-band, is the first fully polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) imaging satellite in China [1]. It was launched on 10 August 2016 and has a design life of eight years. The imaging modes include StripMap mode, ScanSAR mode, Spotlight mode, wave imaging mode, and ultra-fine strip mode [2]. A PolSAR system measures the scattering information of the Earth’s surface with different polarimetric microwaves. It transmits vertical polarization wave [5] and receives echoes in vertical and horizontal polarizations simultaneously. This is followed by transmitting a horizontal polarization wave and, again, receiving echoes in vertical and horizontal polarizations simultaneously
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