First Experimental Results of the C Band SAR and Ground Support System

摘要

This paper presents the design, data processing and experimental results of the C band SAR developed at the Institute of Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IECAS). This C band SAR aims at oil spill monitoring and adopts a compact, low power consumption and lightweight design based on microstrip antenna, solid state power amplifier and 2-axis gimbals allowing installation on UAV. To further process SAR images, the ground support system is employed to accomplish SAR image processing, geometric correction and geocoding, annotation and shape characteristics analysis of pollution. The first flight test has been performed using C band SAR on Harbin Y-12. Large area SAR image with pollution region of sea surface was obtained. With the ground support system, perimeter, area, shape complexity factor and center latitude and longitude coordinates of pollution region are presented in the monitoring report. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of C band SAR and the usability of ground support system in marine monitoring. In the future, the C band SAR should be mounted on the UAV platform to perform oil spill monitoring test.