3-5 Development of Airborne High-Resolution Multi-Parameter Imaging Radar SAR, Pi-SAR
3-5 Development of Airborne High-Resolution Multi-Parameter Imaging Radar SAR, Pi-SAR
The airborne X/L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar system (Polarimetric and Interfero-
metric SAR, Pi-SAR) was developed by the Communications Research Laboratory and
National Space Development Agency of Japan in their joint project from 1993 to 1996. The
resolution of the X-band image is about 1.5 m and L-band is about 3.0m. Both SARs can
make fully polarimetric observations. The X-band SAR has a cross-track interferometric
function that measures the ground height with accuracy of 2 m. These systems are installed
in the airplane, Gulfstream . In this paper we describe our Pi-SAR system and the ground
processing system. In addition, we also discuss the performance of our system by using
the Pi-SAR datad.
Keywords
Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR), High-resolution, Polarimetry, Interferometry, Dual fre-
quency
MGA/MGP
Bandwidth Look number Resolution [m] Pixel [m]
Az 1 Gr 1 2 Az Gr
X-SAR 100MHz 4look 1.5 1.6-17.2 1.25 1.25
50MHz 8look 3.0 3.2-34.4 2.50 2.50
L-SAR 50MHz 4look 3.0 3.5-8.8 2.50 2.50
1:
Theoretical value without any window function
2:
Incidence angle of 20 to 60 degrees
Browse image
1-byte integer
Image swath 50 km (azimuth)20 km (range)
Resolution of about 10 m (range)10 m (azimuth)
If nnnn = 4,000 and mmmm = 3,000, then the sizes are given by:
(a)4,000* (8*3,000)*4 = 384 MB, (b)4,000*4*3,000 = 48 MB.
(3) Reference information
The distributed data includes a reference information file that has "_a" at the end of the file name.
This includes observation information about altitude and airplane speed, latitude/longitude of the
processing site, incidence angle, pixel number, pixel size, and window function processing. You can
refer to this information file together with the JPEG data in this document. It may prove helpful for
reference when analyzing reproduced images.
References
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7 T.Umehara, et al. , "Accuracy validation of ground projection Pi-SAR images ", RSSJ, No31pp.267-
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