Use of C-band ARCs in spaceborne (ERS-1) and airborne (TOPSAR) SAR missions

This paper is addressed to the description and performance analysis of the C-band ARCs developed under a collaboration between the Consortium for Research on Advanced Remote Sensors (CO.RI.S.T.A., Naples, Italy) and the University of Bari (Bari, Italy). The main design considerations and the hardware performance of the active devices are presented. Furthermore, the laboratory measurements of radar cross-section (RCS) and propagation delay time are compared to the ones obtained from SAR data acquired during spaceborne (ERS-1) and airborne (AIRSAR-TOPSAR) campaigns. The radiometric calibration of the SAR images, performed with the intensity integration method, allowed us to recover the RCS of the ARCs within +/-0.8 dB: the RCS values obtained from the calibrated images are in good agreement with the experimental measurements, within the laboratory calibration error (+/-0.6 dB).