A spaceborne SAR calibration simulator based on Gaofen-3 data

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is widely used in remote sensing field, especially for the acquisition of quantitative information about the earth’s environment. Calibration processing is critical for SAR image quantitative applications. This paper proposes a spaceborne SAR calibration simulator to describe the calibration process. First, Amazon rainforest area SAR image from Gaofen-3 was chosen to generate backscatter coefficient by adding a reference reflector for the purpose of quantitative analysis. Then the backscatter coefficient was entered into the spaceborne SAR calibration simulator. The simulator will perform echo simulation based on the system parameters of Gaofen-3. Based on the simulation echo, image formation processing is implemented for generating the focusing image. Furthermore, peak method and integral method were utilized to calibrate the SAR image. Simulation results show that integral method is better for calibration accuracy.