Some results of new microwave remote sensing experiments

Abstract

Within the last two decades, active and passive microwave systems for remote sensing have been tremendously improved in their performance. On one hand this is due to the availability of better analogue components and circuits and on the other hand due to the impressive progress in the field of digital signal processors. Furthermore, new concepts based on understanding physical phenomena have been developed. Airborne and ground based experiments are usually forerunners of spacebome systems. In this paper, image data of recent airborne polarimetric SAR and polarimetric SAR interferometer experiments will be explained with respect to its new information content. In addition, some remarks will be made about ERS1/ERS-2 Tandem data for SAR interferometry with respect to the ground location of the image pixels and the errors caused by environmental changes in the time interval between the multi-pass data takes. The improvements expected by the upcoming SRTM (single-pass) will be mentioned, too. In the field of imaging radiometers, studies and experiments are focussed on imaging aperture synthesis radiometers which take advantage of the multi-beam capabilities of thinned arrays, in order to cover pixel by pixel the sites of interest. Promising images have been achieved. Reaults Will be shoyyn.