Interferometric polarimetric synthetic aperture radar system

Abstract

Polarimetric radar interferometry is a compound technique that has shown the ability to extract geophysical parameters from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images and its usefulness in terrain classification and surface change detection. A three-dimensional image can be constructed by coherence integrating the backscatter data over the measured frequency band and the two spatial coordinates of the two-dimensional synthetic aperture. Accordingly, we have developed a vector network analyzer based three-dimensional synthetic aperture radar imaging system. The radar system consists of the two-dimensional antenna scanner, which are two double-ridged waveguide horn antennas. This test synthetic aperture radar system is used for monitoring radar targets in an anechoic chamber under ideal conditions. The system operates at frequencies between 50 MHz and 20 GHz. The antenna scanning aperture is about 2 meters by 2 meters. Being applied the rotation of polarization basis, the full-polarimetric images for several targets with various permittivities were acquired and some experimental results are demonstrated. When the radar target is a conducting cylinder, the polarization effect is clear. The differential interferometric SAR has shown the high resolution of less than one centimeter in near field condition. The interferometric polarimetric SAR provides abundant information about the radar target is identified. Moreover, the potentials of three-dimensional synthetic aperture radar system are discussed.