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The NASA Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar System
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1996
Year
RadarInterferometry ProcessingEngineeringNasa/jpl Airborne SarAerospace EngineeringSynthetic Aperture RadarCalibrationInterferometryRemote SensingImaging RadarRadar Image ProcessingRadar ApplicationRadar Signal ProcessingGeodesyInstrumentationInterferometric Synthetic Aperture RadarCross-track InterferometryRadar Imaging
The NASA/JPL airborne SAR (AIRSAR) system operates in the fully polarimetric mode at P-, L- and C-band simultaneously or in the interferometric mode in both L- and C-band simultaneously. The system became operational in late 1987 and flew its first mission aboard a DC-8 aircraft operated by NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Since then, the AIRSAR has flown missions every year and acquired images in North, Central and South America, Europe and Australia. In this paper, we will briefly describe the instrument characteristics, the evolution of the various radar modes, the instrument performance, and improvement in the knowledge of the positioning and attitude information of the radar. In addition, we will summarize the progress of the data processing effort especially in the interferometry processing. Finally, we will address the issue of processing and calibrating the cross-track interferometry (XTI) data.