ALOS-2 preliminary calibration assessment

ALOS-2 satellite has been successfully launched by JAXA on May 24th 2014, it is equipped with an L-Band (PALSAR-2) fully polarimetric SAR. Many improvements have been made with respect to the former ALOS satellite: the exploitation of a dual receiving antenna allows to broaden the imaged swath whereas spotlight mode ensures a very high resolution on a specific location. The revisit time has been lowered from 46 to 14 days and the possibility to provide both left and right looking capability ensures a fast coverage in case of emergencies. The features of the ALOS-2 SAR system are designed to provide monitoring of vegetation (deforestation, agricultural areas), topographic changes (landslides, earthquakes) and several kind of disasters (volcanoes´ eruptions, oil spills). The work here presented shows the preliminary calibration assessment of the radar images of ALOS-2. In particular the polarimetric calibration has been analyzed together with the achievable IRF; furthermore, interferometric analyses have also been carried out to assess RFI filtering effect on inter-ferometric phase.