Development and Initial Evaluation of the Tower-based Borealscat-2 P- and L-Band Tomographic SAR

This paper describes the development and initial evaluation of the BorealScat-2 radar. It is installed on a 50 m tall tower at a boreal forest site in northern Sweden and acquires tomographic and multi-polarization measurements at P- and L-band every 5 min. It is of the same design as its predecessor BorealScat except that the antenna frame can be moved along a 4 m horizontal track. A moveable antenna position is motivated by the need to acquire independent samples to reduce backscatter fluctuations. It also enables focused 3D imaging by combing tomographic and SAR processing when the backscatter fluctuations are temporally stable. We show results from data acquired in 2022, which demonstrates 3D imaging of a forest as well as the response from a trihedral.