Improved absolute radiometric calibration of a UHF airborne radar

Author

Chapin, Elaine ; Hawkins, Brian P. ; Harcke, Leif ; Hensley, Scott ; Yunling Lou ; Michel, Thierry R. ; Moreira, Laila ; Muellerschoen, Ronald J. ; Shimada, Joanne G. ; Tham, Kean W. ; Tope, Michael C.

Author_Institution

Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Technol., Pasadena, CA, USA

fYear

2015

fDate

10-15 May 2015

Firstpage

1720

Lastpage

1724

Abstract

The AirMOSS airborne SAR operates at UHF and produces fully polarimetric imagery [1]. The AirMOSS radar data are used to produce Root Zone Soil Moisture (RZSM) depth profiles. The absolute radiometric accuracy of the imagery, ideally of better than 0.5 dB, is key to retrieving RZSM, especially in wet soils where the backscatter as a function of soil moisture function tends to flatten out [2]. In this paper we assess the absolute radiometric uncertainty in previously delivered data, describe a method to utilize Built In Test (BIT) data to improve the radiometric calibration, and evaluate the improvement from applying the method.

Keywords

airborne radar; built-in self test; synthetic aperture radar; AirMOSS airborne SAR; RZSM; built in test data; fully polarimetric imagery; improved absolute radiometric calibration; root zone soil moisture depth profiles; soil moisture function; Imaging; Noise; Radiometry; Reflector antennas; Synthetic aperture radar;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Radar Conference (RadarCon), 2015 IEEE

Conference_Location

Arlington, VA

Print_ISBN

978-1-4799-8231-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/RADAR.2015.7131276

Filename

7131276