Airborne circular SAR imaging: Results at P-band

The first airborne Circular SAR data acquisition experiment of China was carried out in Sichuan by the National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Microwave Imaging (MITL), China. Data was acquired using the MITL´s P-band, fully polarimetric SAR system along a circular trajectory with the beam spotted on the same area. Compared with the conventional SAR along a straight path, this imaging mode mainly has the following attractive features. First, observing from all directions can help for a better understanding of the scattering properties of targets. Second, the wide angular aperture obtained via flight in a circular track makes possible high resolutions with low frequency band. Third, the aspect angle diversity inherent to the circular track allows for a 3-D target reconstruction. This paper presents the SAR processing of such data, and shows several results to analyze the potentials and limitations of such imaging geometry.