Calibration of Circularly Polarized Synthetic Aperture Radar

Our laboratory developed airborne circularly polarized synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for disaster and environment observation. This paper explains the investigation of scattering characteristics of circular polarization in the ground test and flight test of circularly polarized SAR in the Hinotori-C2 mission onboard CN235MPA aircraft in March 2018 at Makassar, Indonesia. The ground test was held to investigate a multi-polarized single pulse scattering from various corner reflectors. The flight test was done with multipath to collect the full polarimetric circularly polarized images. The circularly polarized scattering clarification was done using trihedral, cylindrical, and omni corner reflectors. The result shows good agreement with the theory and our previous research. The proposed circularly polarized SAR will be employed in further study of scattering and calibration techniques.