A Novel OFDM Waveform for Fully Polarimetric SAR Data Acquisition

Abstract

In this paper we present a new waveform generation technique for fully polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data acquisition. This approach is based on the principle of the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) technique. Unlike current polarimetric data acquisition mode, a fully polarimetric scattering matrix is obtained through a single transmission event using the proposed waveforms, so that an increase of the pulse repetition frequency (PRF) can be avoided. The work also introduces processing aspects for the received signals and investigates their spectral coherence by measuring the correlation coefficient between them. The aim is to prove the potential of the OFDM waveforms for SAR polarimetry.