Calibration of polarimetric radar system with giant aperture antenna

This paper describes a convenient technique for polarimetric calibration of a polarimetric inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) system with giant aperture antennas. With this technique, only a polarimetric active radar calibrator (PARC) with two independently rotary antennas is needed to calibrate the radar system. A complete polarimetric measurement mathematical model is adopted without any assumption. The calibration method is on the basis of Pauli matrix decomposition. We use four Lexicographic calibrators provided by the PARC instead of three Pauli calibrators. For these reasons, the calculation of error coefficients in the model is easier and the calibration performance is better than that in other calibration methods, such as the generalized calibration technique (GCT) and target spinor calibration (TSC). An experimental validation is presented. Excellent agreement is obtained between the theoretical analysis and the experimental results. A 35 dB improvement in the system cross-polarization isolation is obtained using the proposed method.