SIR-C polarimetric calibration experiment using polarization selective dihedrals: a preliminary result

SIR-C polarimetric calibration experiment is carried out in April and October, 1994 at Sarobetsu test site in Hokkaido, Japan. The targets deployed in the test site are newly proposed polarization selective dihedrals (PSDs) and 22.5° rotated dihedrals (RDs) as well as C-band polarimetric active radar calibrators (CPARCs) and a trihedral. The PARC results are good and is almost similar to the JPL summary result. The PSDs exhibit good polarization signatures in the SIR-C image and show a promising role for polarimetric calibration: however, a polarimetric calibration using PSDs and 22.5° RDs gives poor results probably due to the pointing errors of the latter target in the April experiment. Better results are expected from the October data, since the pointing precision is higher than that in the April experiment