The Influence of the Azimuth RCS Pattern of Calibrator on SAR Absolute Calibration

Abstract

The realization of radiometric calibration relies on the known artificial point targets as the reference, such as corner reflectors. One of the criteria of the calibrator is that the 3 dB-beamwidth of the azimuth radar cross section (RCS) pattern needs to be larger than the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) antenna 3-dB beamwidth to ensure the SAR antenna, which has a narrow azimuth beamwidth, can align to the calibrator while also making the nominal RCS value of the calibrator approximately constant during the radiometric calibration. However, the RCS of the calibrator is actually inconstant within a synthetic aperture period, especially when the SAR antenna beamwidth is wide. The simplified treatment will introduce errors to calibration. In this letter, the azimuth RCS pattern is taken into account. The error caused by the constant RCS is modeled. Based on the error model, an improved criterion of the calibrator is discussed. The experiments use the known SAR system parameters for numerical simulation based on dihedral corner reflectors (DCRs) with different sizes. The results verify the error model and indicate that when the SAR beamwidth is larger than the beamwidth of the calibrator, and the introduced error cannot be ignored. The relationship between the size of the calibrator and the SAR beamwidth is further analyzed through the experiments.