Abstract
Uninhabited aerial vehicle synthetic aperture radar (UAVSAR) is a reconfigurable polarimetric L-band SAR that operates in quad-polarization mode and is specifically designed to acquire airborne repeat-track SAR data for interferometric measurements. In this paper, we present details of the UAVSAR radar performance, the radiometric calibration, and the polarimetric calibration. For the radiometric calibration, we employ an array of trihedral corner reflectors, as well as distributed targets. We show that UAVSAR is a well-calibrated SAR system for polarimetric applications, with absolute radiometric calibration bias better than 1 dB, residual root-mean-square (RMS) errors of ~0.7 dB, and RMS phase errors ~5.3°. For the polarimetric calibration, we have evaluated the methods of Quegan and Ainsworth et al. for crosstalk calibration and find that the method of Quegan gives crosstalk estimates that depend on target type, whereas the method of Ainsworth et al. gives more stable crosstalk estimates. We find that both methods estimate leakage of the copolarizations into the cross-polarizations to be on the order of -30 dB.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callMore From: IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
