Quick Quality Assessment and Radiometric Calibration of C-SAR/01 Satellite Using Flexible Automatic Corner Reflector

Abstract

C-SAR/01, the successor of China’s Gaofen-3 Satellite, which launched on 23 November 2021, is the first synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite to be launched in China’s civil space infrastructure plan and has served as an invaluable data resource. Radiometric calibration and validation are prerequisites for the quantitative application of SAR data. In this study, the radiometric calibration experiments of C-SAR/01 data of the ultra-fine strip (UFS) and fine strip I (FSI) modes were conducted applying flexible automatic triangular trihedral corner reflectors deployed in Xilinhot SAR satellite calibration and validation site. Accordingly, the image quality and radiometric calibration accuracy were evaluated. The results show that the spatial resolution, peak sidelobe ratio, and integrated sidelobe ratio of UFS and FSI mode data of C-SAR/01 are better than those of the design indexes, and the calibration results from the integral method are more stable than those from the peak method. Furthermore, the standard deviation of the calibration constant for UFS mode data is 0.234 dB, with the relative and absolute calibration accuracies obtained as 0.233 and 0.532 dB, respectively, whereas the standard deviation calibration constant for FSI mode data is 0.198 dB, with its relative and absolute calibration accuracies evaluated as 0.199 and 0.333 dB, respectively.