VERIFICATION OF ALTERNATING POLARIZATION PRODUCTS

• Main Authors: Pw Vachon, R Touzi, H Mcnairn, J Dobson
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Asar; Canada
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.220.9346; http://envisat.esa.int/calval/proceedings/asar/asar_18.pdf

Preliminary results are presented from the alternating polarization (AP) mode of the ASAR instrument on ENVISAT. ENVISAT is the first operational satellite offering synthetic aperture radar with a choice of polarization. Launched in March 2002, the first AP mode data provided for our investigation was from May 21, 2002 and was followed by a series of 16 products dating to August 28 th. In this preliminary review, results from beams IS2 and IS7 are shown for two locations in Canada: one near Ottawa and one from the high arctic in the vicinity of Resolute. In both sites, precision transponders (RPTs), originally designed to support RADARSAT-1, offer measurements of a number of ground reception parameters including azimuth antenna pattern, flux density, and detected chirp characteristics. These are tabulated for example scenes. Products examined include APS, APM, and APP. Polarizations include HH/VV and HH/HV combinations. In general, results are very encouraging from many perspectives, image quality is better than the mission requirement, and SNR is considerably better than the specification.