End-to-end SAR System Calibration of ROSE-L

Abstract:
The Radar Observing System for Europe L-band SAR (ROSE-L) is an upcoming ESA mission within its Copernicus program. It will expand the program with a fully polarimetric L-band SAR system. To meet the system’s performance requirements, the mission will employ sophisticated techniques such as multiple azimuth phase centers (MAPS) and scan-on-receive (SCORE). In addition to fulfilling stringent performance requirements, the end-to-end calibration of the SAR system encounters notables challenges due to the propagation effects at L-band including Faraday rotation and ionospheric delay. In order to isolate propagation effects from hardware imperfections in the SAR instrument, dedicated reference targets have to be developed and deployed. Thus, the German Aerospace Center (DLR), which is responsible for the end-to-end calibration of the SAR system, will design and develop novel calibration methods and algorithms for the ROSE-L system.