Development of circularly polarized Synthetic Aperture Radar onboard Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (CP-SAR UAV)

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is well-known as a multi-purpose sensor that can be operated in all-weather and day-night time. The past SAR sensors for Earth observation mission are commonly operated in linear polarization that sensitive to Faraday rotation effect, especially in low frequency. This paper introduce our Circularly Polarized Synthetic Aperture Radar onboard Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (CP-SAR UAV) that is developed to retrieve the physical information of Earth surface for Earth diagnosis mission. The CP-SAR system is considered as small, light in weight and low power consumption system. The CP-SAR sensor is employing elliptical wave propagation and scattering phenomenon by radiating and receiving the elliptically polarized wave, including the special polarization as circular and linear polarizations. This paper introduces the CP-SAR and UAV system, including simulated full polarimetric CP-SAR images.