signature=874d35de771f000cd34718a6fed95e40,On the use of distributed targets for the calibration ima...

Abstract

In 1981 ESA (European Space Agency) organized a large measurement campaign in Europe to stimulate the interest in radar, especially SAR. The Canadian SAR 580 system visited testsites during a 1 month period. Imagery was acquired in X, C and L band. Since several experiments called for calibrated measurement values, a calibration program was added, consisting of flights over calibration sites in the UK and Germany. On these site corner reflectors were set up. The results of this calibration will be presented to all participants. One of the test sites in The Netherlands was located in the Flevopolder, an agricultural area. During the growing season and especially during the SAR-580 flights scatterometer measurements were made here. The Dutch digital SLAR system operated at the same time. The knowledge on the radar signature of crops can be used to calibrate the SAR-580 images, like it has been done for the Dutch digital SLAR system. Unfortunately the quality of the SAR-580 data was too bad to enable this calibration and to compare the data with our SLAR system and scatterometer. Nevertheless the method is worthwile te be reported.