First Experiences with Active C-Band Radar Reflectors and Sentinel-1

We report our first results with Sentinel-1 Interferometric Wide Swath (IW) data using novel off-the-shelf electronic corner reflectors (ECRs) for geometric measurements with C-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). At the German Aerospace Center (DLR) campus in Oberpfaffenhofen, we set up an arrangement consisting of two trihedral corner reflector and two active ECRs. We describe the practical aspects of such ECRs as well as first radiometric characteristics. Moreover, we present geometric accuracy as derived from imaging geodesy, i.e. absolute radargrammetric positioning in 2D and 3D, as well as interferometric phase measurements.