External calibration of the PARSAX dual-channel FMCW polarimetric agile radar system

Calibration is an important aspect of polarimetric radar design. In order to determine the accurate backscattering matrix (BSM) of a target, accurate measurements of the relative amplitudes and phases of the returned signals scattered by the targets are needed. This paper formulates the polarization BSM of a polarimetric agile radar system explicitly. The paper focuses on the external calibration of the radar system using a rotatable dihedral corner reflector. Comparison between the measurement results and the theoretical values of the polarization BSM of the dihedral demonstrates the validity of our calibration approach.