Polarimetric calibration of the SIR-C C-band channel using active radar calibrators and polarization selective dihedrals

A polarimetric calibration experiment of Shuttle Imaging Radar C (SIR-C) is carried out using several different calibration targets. These are C-band polarimetric active radar calibrators (PARCs), polarization selective dihedrals (PSDs), 22.5/spl deg/ rotated dihedrals, and a trihedral. A novel polarimetric calibration algorithm is proposed that combines existing algorithms and uses one PARC and two PSDs. An error evaluation example is shown to estimate the typical hardware error value of the calibration targets allowable for a given calibration error. The novel algorithm gives polarimetric calibration results comparable to those obtained using the existing algorithm for three PARCs. Since PSDs work at frequencies lower than design frequency, and hence can be commonly used at multiple frequency bands, the simple addition of just one more frequency band PARC allows polarimetric calibration of a dual-frequency polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) by means of the proposed algorithm.