Hinotori-C2 Mission : CN235MPA Aircraft Onboard Circularly Polarized Synthetic Aperture Radar (CP-SAR)

Chiba University proposed and developed airborne C band circularly polarized synthetic aperture radar (CP-SAR) for environment and disaster monitoring. This paper explains concept, system configuration, RF system and antenna, and flight test of CP-SAR in Hinotori-C2 (Firebird-C2) mission onboard CN235MPA aircraft on 14-15 March 2018 at Indonesia. The result of flight test depicts full polarimetric CP images that shows good performance of CP-SAR. The assessment of CP image analysis, and novel image classification using axial ratio (AR), ellipticity (ε), and polarization ratio (ρ) are discussed.