Oil platforms in Caspian Sea as stable distributed radar scatterers for palsar calibration

An analysis of oil platforms long-term stability in Caspian Sea seen on the Japanese synthetic aperture radar PALSAR and PALSAR-2 images is made. It is shown that typical radar cross section stability of oil platforms is about 0.5 dB, what is close to the parameters of specially designed calibration targets. Possibility of PALSAR and PALSAR-2 intercalibration using the oil platforms under study is demonstrated.