A complete error model for free space polarimetric measurements

The authors present a complete 12-term error model for the systematic errors in polarimetric radar and antenna free space measurements for test range and laboratory use. Errors are induced by the frequency response, the channel imbalance, the coupling between the transmit channels, the coupling between the receive channels, the coupling from transmit to receive and by the residual reflections of the environment. The errors are contained in three 2×2 matrices, the isolation matrix, the transmit matrix and the receive matrix. A full polarimetric calibration with the empty room, a sphere, a vertical dihedral corner and a 45° dihedral corner is proposed. The physical understanding is supported by a cubic signal graph for the error terms