P-3 ultra-wideband SAR: description and examples

Under the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)/ASTO sponsorship, through a contract from the Naval Air Warfare Center (NAWC), the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan (ERIM) has developed an ultrawideband (UWB) very high frequency (VHF)/ultrahigh frequency (UHF) fully polarimetric airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for studying the detection of foliage-obscured objects. The radar is installed in the NAWC P-3 testbed aircraft and takes advantage of existing ERIM-built multimode, fully-polarimetric X/L/C-band SAR hardware. This paper describes the radar and presents some examples of its capabilities including polarimetric imagery and two-pass interferometric surface height estimates.