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The effect of topography on SAR calibration

Journal Article · · IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (United States)
OSTI ID:5341538
; ;  [1];  [2]
  1. California Inst. of Tech., Pasadena, CA (United States). Jet Propulsion Lab.
  2. Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States)

During normal synthetic aperture radar (SAR) processing, a flat earth is assumed when performing radiometric corrections such as antenna pattern and scattering area removal. Here the authors examine the effects of topographic variations on these corrections. Local slopes will cause the actual scattering area to be different from that calculated using the flat earth assumption. It is shown that this effect, which is present for both airborne and spaceborne SAR data, may easily cause calibration errors larger than a decibel. Ignoring the topography during antenna pattern removal is expected to be negligible for spaceborne SAR's. In this paper they show how these effects can be taken into account if a digital elevation model is available for the imaged area. It is also shown that not taking the topography into account during antenna pattern removal introduces polarimetric calibration errors.

OSTI ID:
5341538
Journal Information:
IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (United States), Journal Name: IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (United States) Vol. 31:5; ISSN IGRSD2; ISSN 0196-2892
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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