The OSCAR Instrument: SAR Processing and Calibration

Abstract:
The OSCAR instrument is a gimbal-based multi-channel interferometric Ku-band SAR system recently developed and built within the framework of a European Space Agency funded project Ocean Surface Currents Airborne Radar demonstrator. The OSCAR system is tailored to the observations of the ocean surface motion and retrieval of wind. This paper presents the development background of the OSCAR instrument. It also presents the methodology and techniques used to process and calibrate the OSCAR data up to co-registered intra-channel phase interferometric complex SAR images. Calibration over land shows that velocity accuracy of 5cm/s is achieved. Results from the OSCAR functional campaign and from the first OSCAR operational campaign, the SeaSTARex, are presented.