The Lincoln Laboratory 35 GHz airborne SAR imaging radar system

The Lincoln Laboratory 35 GHz airborne SAR (synthetic aperture radar) imaging radar system consists of an instrumentation-quality Ka-band airborne radar plus a ground processing and archive system. This state-of-the-art radar system provides data collection in SAR and RAR (real aperture radar) modes, full polarization, high resolution (in both range and cross range), and archiving of fully calibrated data. The airborne radar system was developed to provide data inputs to advance the understanding of millimeter-wave imaging phenomenology and to develop and test algorithms for detecting and classifying stationary targets of military interest. The resulting images stored in the database are completely calibrated, fully polarimetric, and complex. The system performance specifications associated with the fully processed, calibrated imagery are listed. The operational modes and performance characteristics of the airborne system are described, and an overview of its major components is provided. The major systems of the ground-based processing, and analysis system are also described