TRANSFORMATION OF DUAL-POLARIZED RADAR MEASUREMENTS TO ARBITRARY POLARIZATION BASES

A fully polarimetric radar system consists of an orthogonal dual-polar ized transmission mode and a dual-channel receive mode that are typica lly set to be copolar and cross polar to the transmit state of polariz ation. The transmit polarization state is switched every pulse repetit ion time (PRT) between any two orthogonal states. This paper presents an interpolation technique to construct time series of instantaneous s cattering matrices (ISM) from fully polarimetric time series measureme nts obtained at every PRT from distributed scatterers. It is also show n theoretically that propagation effects need not be removed before tr ansformation. The constructed series of ISMs are then transformed to o ther polarization bases. The resulting new ISMs are then used to calcu late the radar parameters in the new basis. The suggested procedure is studied using data (collected at linear +/- 45-degrees as well as hor izontal and vertical polarization bases) from POLDIRAD, the dual-chann el, polarimetric C-band radar operated by the German Aerospace Researc h Establishment.