Assessment of Polarimetric and Interferometric Image Quality for Chinese Domestic X-Band Airborne SAR System

This paper concerns the radar image characteristic retrieval from the Chinese domestic X-band polarimetric and interferometric synthetic aperture radar (named XSAR, the China Electronics Technology Group Corporation 38 department product). In this domestic SAR system, the relative calibration process is considered, but the absolute calibration is not good performance. To outline the domestic SAR accuracy, the applicability of this radar system image is discussed here. The radar image characteristics are analyzed in three aspects: the radar interferometric process, the radar polarimetric attribute, and the radar optimum polarimetric interferometric behavior. The experiment shows some significant conclusions: firstly, the polarimetric Eigen-Decomposition algorithm is still valid and the absolute calibration impact could be ignored; then, the relative values of three optimum coherences are changeless even absenting the absolute calibration; the accuracy of optimum interferometric phase could be up to the requirement of 1:50000 mapping; at last, even the high frequency, the X-band EM wave is also potential to inverse the underlying ground altitude and the vegetation high in the spare planting area. Those conclusions give the possible application range of XSAR and could be used to evaluate the image profiles of the next domestic SAR system.