Calibration of bistatic polarimetric scatterometers

The recent interest in bistatic and multistatic radar has led to a need for information concerning the bistatic reflectivity of clutter viewed by such systems. Unfortunately, little information is available describing calibration for a bistatic radar system. This paper presents a new calibration technique for bistatic scatterometers. This technique assumes perfect isolation between antenna ports. It is shown that all magnitudes and phases (relative to one of the similarly polarized linear polarization configurations) of the radar transfer function can be calibrated without knowledge of the scattering matrix of a reference target. Only the use of the direct path between the transmitter and receiver is required. The technique is particularly useful for calibrating a radar under field conditions, because it does not require a set of calibration targets