Cp-sar Uav Development

Up till now, only linearly polarized microwave radiation are employed by the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems onboard spaceborne platforms. In general, such linearly polarized SAR (LP-SAR) systems are very sensitive to Faraday rotation in the ionosphere and platform posture, both of which will contribute to system noise superposed on the resulting backscattering signature. So as to improve the situation, currently a novel Circularly Polarized Synthetic Aperture Radar (CP-SAR) sensor is developed in our Microwave Remote Sensing Laboratory, Chiba University. As an early stage of the development of this CP-SAR sensor, we will make use of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) platform, called as Josaphat Laboratory Experimental UAV (JX-1) for testing CPSAR capabilities. In this paper, we describe the CP-SAR hardware system design and CP-SAR parameters calculation with its results. The possibility of implementing a smaller antenna using the new CP-SAR technique than with conventional LP-SAR systems is shown. This research will contribute to the realization of a compact CP-SAR sensor, which can be installed on a small and low cost platform yielding a high accuracy SAR image data. The experience and knowledge of CP-SAR UAV experimental will be very valuable to realize a CP-SAR sensor onboard a small satellite platform as the final stage of the CP-SAR sensor development roadmap.