Synthetic aperture radar calibration using reference reflectors

A simple expression for the terrain backscatter coefficient is derived in terms of the integrated power of an adjacent known radar reflector in a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image. It is shown that this technique for SAR image calibration is independent of the radar system focus or partial coherence and thereby possesses an important advantage over the usual technique, which relies on an estimate of the peak of the reflector impulse response. Results from airborne SAR overflights of corner reflectors and active radar calibrators are used to demonstrate the validity and consistency of the method and to show that the method is robust under defocus caused by an incorrect FM rate or inadequate motion compensation of data collected during turbulence. It is also shown that the fading errors associated with the integral method are comparable to or slightly worse than those associated with the peak estimation method. However, this small disadvantage is outweighed by the fact that the integral method is independent of actual resolution