Aircraft and High Altitude Platform System Onboard Circularly Polarized Synthetic Aperture Radar (CP-SAR)

Chiba University proposed and developed airborne and high altitude platform system (HAPS) onboard C band circularly polarized synthetic aperture radar (CP-SAR) for environment and disaster monitoring on altitude 2–20 km. This paper explains concept, system configuration, RF system and antenna, and flight test of CP-SAR in Hinotori-C2 (Firebird-C2) mission onboard CN235MPA aircraft on 14–15 March 2018 at Indonesia. The result of flight test depicts full polarimetric CP images that shows good performance of CP-SAR. The assessment of CP image analysis, and novel image classification using axial ratio (AR), ellipticity (e), and polarization ratio (p) are discussed. We plan to hold the flight test of HAPS onboard CP-SAR in 2023.