Reconsideration of Ambiguities in Quad-Pol SAR

Inhalt:
Merging the complex signals available from both cross-polarized (cross-pol) channels of a quad-polarimetric (quad-pol) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) may lead not only to a 3-dB gain in the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), but also to a remarkable improvement in the azimuth and range ambiguity-to-signal ratios (AASR, RASR) of cross-pol data, especially if azimuth phase coding is employed. Staggered SAR operation is also addressed, for which a novel azimuth phase code is proposed. Range ambiguities in cross-pol data can also be reduced by adopting a hybrid-polarimetric architecture, but this may result in a degradation of the AASR of the cross-pol channels.