HIGH ACCURACY CALIBRATION INSTRUMENTS FOR THE TERRASAR-XCOMMISSIONING PHASE

摘要

This paper describes the development and system conceptfor an active and highly integrated, digitally controlledSAR system calibrator. For precise and high-quality SARdata, precise ground targets are necessary for externalcalibration of the SAR data. Compared to passive targets,active radar targets like transponders offer more features.The recording of the transmitted radar signals from thesatellite becomes possible and allows additional dataanalysis and data correction. A total of 18 activetransponder and receiver systems and 16 receiver onlysystems will be fabricated for the TerraSAR-X calibrationcampaign in summer 2007 [1], [2], [3]. TerraSAR-X isthe first German spaceborne X-band SAR satellitemission. For the satellite antenna pattern estimation out of thereceived radar data, a two dimensional antenna patternrecognition algorithm is presented. For pre-launchinvestigation, a simulation environment with theTerraSAR-X parameters was built to investigate theantenna pattern reconstruction algorithm out of simulateddata.