The Danish polarimetric SAR for remote sensing applications

This paper presents the Danish polarimetric SAR system, EMISAR, and the approach taken in the system design to achieve a reliable high performance system. The design and implementation of the antenna system as well as the analog and digital hardware are discussed. The SAR utilises a dual polarised microstrip antenna with probe fed patches and the antenna exhibits a modified cosec-squared pattern with high polarisation discrimination. The two transmitted polarisations arc time multiplcxed at the transmittcr and at thc dual channcl (Vand H-polar) reccivcr front end while azimuth pre-filtering is implemented by indcpendent circuits for the four parallel channels (VV, VH, HV, and HH). The system has bcen designed to permit both Cand L-band data to be recorded on the same high density digital tape. The paper presents the performance of the system including measured resolution, peakand integrated sidclobes, polarimetric channel imbalancc and cross-talk.